MMWWWftftiWtKMaiMWiJiJSi . 



WHITTIER'S 



SNOW-BOU 




Class _:F.Sl3^^ 
Book M - 



GopyrightW^. 



iLif 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE CRANE CLASSICS 



WHITTIEE'S 

SNOW-BOUND, AMONG THE HILLS, 



AND OTHER POEMS. 



WITH BIOGRAPHY AND NOTES 



BY 



MARGAKET HILL McCARTEE, 

Former Teacher of English and American Litera- 
ture, Topeka High School. 



CRANE & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 

TOPEKA, KANSAS 

1904 



75 



'A/ 



LIBRARY cf CONGRESS 
Two Copies fieceiveu 

DEC 10 IS04 

f, Copyrtgnt Entry , 

CUSS-^ XXc. NOJ 
COHY y 



Copyright 1904, 

By Crane & Company, 

Topeka, Kansas. 



CONTENTS. 



PAOB. 

Introduction 5 

Sketch of John Greenleaf Whittier 7 

Snow-Bound 15 

Among the Hills 44 

The Prayer of Agassiz 63 

How the Robin Came 67 

Telling the Bees 70 

Songs of Labor 73 



INTEODTJCTION TO SNOW-BOUND. 



This poem has been classed by Stedman with The 
Cotter s Saturday Night and The Deserted Village. It 
is considered the best description of a l^orthern winter 
and a "New England country home yet put into literature. 
In it the writer, looking back upon a household of whom 
only two survived, called up the tender memories and 
home-sweet pictures of his boyhood. It is this touch of 
love, of blood-kin s;)Tnpathy, that makes the poem appeal 
to all home-loving hearts, and keeps it a classic. The 
main characteristic of its style is simplicity, but the poem 
abounds in touches of beauty. In lines 179-211, with 
the sadness of a lonely heart for whom no hearth-fire 
brightens, no near ties of kin remain except the bond of 
brotherhood for one brother alone, there is mingled with 
the sadness the hope of a trustful spirit: 

" Love will dream and Faith will trust, 
(Since He who knows our need is just), 
That eomehow, somewhere, meet we must." 

And again in lines 425-427 : 

"What chance can reach the wealth I hold? 
What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
Thy love hath left in trust with me? " - 

Perhaps the most beautiful passage in the poem is the 
broad sympathy expressed, beginning with line 561: 

" Where *er her troubled path may be, 
The Lord*g swept pity with her go\ " 
(5) 



6 THE CRAIsE CLASSICS 

In form the composition is simple also. An introduc- 
tory picture, a clear view of what being snow-hound meant 
to the isolated household, a photographic portraiture of the 
household, the breaking of the icy bounds, and the bitter- 
sweet reflection, out of which the bitterness soon vanishes, 
and only tenderness remains. These are the '' parts of 
the whole," and the reader at the close feels also 

" The grateful sense 
Of sweetness near, he knows not \Al)eiice. 
And, pausing, takes with forehead be re 
Tha benediction of the air." 



SKETCH OF JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIEE. 

1807-1892. 

T. 

" He worshipped as his fathers did, 
And kept the faith of childish days, 

And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid, 
He loved the good old ways." 

Fourscore and five years of the nineteenth century are 
represented in the life of John Greenleaf Whittier. The 
nation was but little more than thirty years old when he 
was born. When he came to the end of his earthly way 
it was more than a hundred years old. In its first cen- 
tury of existence he played his part. Doubtless few people 
comprehended, in the days of his quiet, uneventful life, 
how much his mind was doing in the shaping of history. 
But in the perspective he looms up great and strong — a 
force to be reckoned with in the development of events. 

iSTew England is not the only locality of the United 
States that is rich in historic treasure, nor can it now claim 
itself to be the center of literary life. For history and 
literature, with ^' the star of empire,'^ have taken their 
way lueshvard. This fact, however, rohs ]N'ew Englaild 
of none of its glory, and historic old Massachusetts can 
claim no more worthy child than the little Quaker boy 
whose life began in the plain farm-house near Haverhill, 
on December 17, 1807. 

His parents were Friends, and in this faith they reared 
their children. Little need be said of them, except that 
like their children they lived simply and sincerely, in com- 

(7) 



8 ' THE CEANE CLASSICS 

fort that came to be modest luxiirv. There were four 
children: John and Matthew, and Mary and Elizabeth. 
The poet long outlived his parents and sisters ; his brother's 
death occurred some nine years before his own. 

In " Snow-Bound " the portrayal of the family life is 
touchingly well drawn. Of education Whittier had little. 
Above the common school which in the second and third 
decades of the century could not have offered many ad- 
vantages, he had two years of academic training in the 
Haverhill institution. College life, and all that it stands 
for in mental discipline and good-fellowship and oppor- 
tunity, were never vouchsafed to him. 

The first writer to inspire Whittier to poetic writing was 
Burns. In the plain surroundings of his home, with the 
monotonous routine of farm life, and the discouragement 
given to literary effort by the early members of the Quaker 
Church, the young man had little outlet for the spirit of 
poetry striving within him. His first efforts were sent 
to the weekly newspapers. It was not until 1831 that he 
brought out a modest little volume of poems. 

By the death of his father, in 1830, Wliittier was called 
to care for the support of his mother and sisters. Not be- 
ing strong enough to follow the life of a farmer, he de- 
voted himself to editorial and literary production. Among 
his earliest friends in this work were William Lloyd Gar- 
rison and George D. Prentice. 

Whittier was called to the State Legislature of Massa- 
chusetts for the term of 1835-1836, and his promise for 
public service in office was most fair, had not the trend 
of events turned him to an unpopular line of thought. He 
early became an intense partisan on the question of slavery. 



SKETCH OF JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER \f 

To be of anti-slavery opinion meant for him the renuncia- 
tion of a possible seat in Congress, with the honor and 
usefulness thereunto pertaining; and it meant also the 
loss of local popularity. It meant the jeer of the mob 
instead of the plaudits of the crowd. x\nd the poet-poli- 
tician deliberately gave up the honor, the opportunity, and 
the pleasure, and took for his portion the ridicule, the 
narrow sphere, the quiet life. But the power he re- 
linquished gave place in time to an unconquerable force. 
The unpopular opinion, it became an honor to hold, and 
the cro^vn of ignoininy a wreath of unfading laurels round 
his brow. 

^ In the fight that made public opinion against slavery, 
the poet was a leader. His service as secretary of the 
American Anti-Slavery Society, of Philadelpha, and his 
editorials for newspapers of the same persuasion, were his 
last public work. 

In 1840 he retired to private life on account of frail 
health. But for fifty-two years longer he lived to put 
forth his best literary efforts, and to become the household 
idol of American homes. 

He was never married. Why, it is not recorded. In 
his writings he gives here and there glimpses of a romance 
that must remain untold. It may be he refers to him- 
self when he says in the poem, In School Days: 

" Still memory to a gray-haired man 

That sweet child face is showing. 
Dear girl! the grasses on her grave 

Have forty years been growing." 



10 THE CKANE CLASSICS. 

But his poem, Memories^ turns us to the living: 

" Years have passed on, and left their trace 

Of graver care and deeper thought; 
And unto me the calm, cold face 
Of manhood, and to thee the grace 

Of woman's pensive beauty brought. 
]More wide, perchance, for blame than praise, 

The school-boy's humble name has blown; 
Thine in the green and quiet ways 

Of unobtrusive goodness known." 

For half a century and a little more Whittier lived in 
retirement, sometimes at Amesbury, sometimes at Dan- 
vers. With the coming of old age the sweetness of a 
Christian spirit ripened in him: 

"And that which should accompany old age, 
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends," 

all were his. And when at last his tale of years was told, 
Avhen he had outlived all ties of blood-relationship, wdth 
no wife nor child to mourn for him, he passed away, the 
American people whose he w^as, gave saintly burial to him. 
His memory is enshrined in the loving hearts of thousands 
who never saw him. He lives as all such live who love 
their fellow-men, and who lift up strong and fearless 
hands in their behalf. 

II. 

*' Freedom ! if to me belong 
Nor mighty Milton's gift divine, 

Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song, 

Still with a love as deep and strong 
As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on tliy shrine." 

AVhittier is essentially the household poet. He was not 
the polished linguist Longfellow could claim himself to 



SKETCH OF JOH:^^ GREENLEAF WllITTIER 11 

be. He had not the reach and vigor of Lowell. He was 
cast in a mold altogether unlike Holmes. He was not in 
the truest sense scientific, nor diplomatic, nor scholarly.' 
But beauty and sympathy and truth were attributes he 
sought to glorify. And inasmuch as these appeal to the 
common mind and heart and enter into and make up the 
strength and hope of the common life, it is Whittier who 
has crept into the unfilled niche in the common home. 

His style is simplicity itself. He never attempts 
flights from which he must drop unceremoniously. A 
rippling, even-tenored song is his. 

And yet when he assailed a wrong, something of the old 
Hebrew fire blazed forth in him, — a righteous wrath 
that would be stayed only by righting evil. His table of 
contents runs after the fashion of the events that most im- 
pressed his life. It opens with the age of legend. Fol- 
lowing this is the colonial period. Mary Garvin, Abraham 
Davenport, Shipper Ireson's Ride,, and The Prophecy of 
Samuel S email, tell of E'ew England before the Kevolu- 
tionary days. 

In his early life the poet had access to few books. These 
he read and re-read till they became his own mental pos- 
session. Among them was the Bible. And all through 
his writings there appears the fine old Scripture phrase that 
beautifies and strengthens them and makes them appeal 
so powerfully to the people of a Christian civilization, 
whether they worship 

"At Jerusalem's court or on Gerezim's Hill." 

Whittier's love of freedom is shown in his poems on 
Quaker persecution as well as on slavery. Among these 



12 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

Cassandra Soutluvick stands out prominentlv. One may 
not read his Massachusetts to Virginia without feeling- 
even at this far-distant date some thrill of the challenge it 
holds. 

"The voice of Massachusetts! Of her free sons and daughters, — 
Deep calling unto deep aloud, — the sound of many waters! 
Against the burden of that voice what tyrant power shall stand? 
IS^o fetters in the Bay State! No slave upon her land." 

Always The Burial of Barber and Le Marais du Cygne 
will appeal to the children of Kansas, whose early history 
they commemorate. 

xifter the war, when measures of battle had given way 
to the songs of peace, Whittier wrote some of his best 
verses. Among them are the longer poems of Snow- 
Bound and Among the Hills. The shorter productions 
touched the whole range of the writer's experience — the 
song of hope, the hymn of praise, the pastoral scene, the 
legend, the voice of labor, and Miscellany, not easily re- 
corded. 

But through them all, the sweetness of spirit, the ve- 
hemence of the power of good over evil, and the tender 
sympathy for the erring, are the distinguishing marks. It 
is on these that Whittier's claim to permanence rests. His 
pen was a power to be feared as the sword of a general. 
So he helped to shape the whole story of the Civil War. 

Year by year the ballad and lyric rhyme and song in- 
spire to just and noble living, respect for honest labor, and 
trust in the eternal goodness that rules the world. 

" The words he spake, the thoughts he penned, 

Are mortal as his hand and brain. 
But if he served his Master's end. 

He has not lived in vain." 



SKETCH OF JOHN GBEENLEAF WHITTIER 13 

III. 

Whittier has been called 

The Quaker Poet, 

The iSTational Poet of America, 

The Wood-thrush of Amesburj, 

The Hebrew Poet of The Il^ineteenth Century. 
For Biographical Writings, see — 

Fable for Critics — J. R. Lowell. 

Poets' Homes — P. H. Stoddard. 

Biography — W. S. Kennedy, F. H. Underwood. 
For Works of Reference, see — 

American Literature — E. P. Whipple. 

Poets of America — E. C. Stedman. 

Whittier — R. H. Stoddard, Scribner's Monthly, 
August, 1879. 

Whittier — J. S. Thayer, l^orth American Review, 
July, 1854. 

Chats About Books and Novelists — M. W. Hazel- 
tine. 
Anti-Slavery Men and Women : 

Wendell Phillips, Lucy Stone, Chas. B. Storrs, Fred 

Douglass, Charles Sumner, Lydia Maria Child, the 

Beechers, W. L. Garrison. 
Poems on Whittier: 

Whittier's Birthday (seventieth and eightieth), O. 
W. Holmes. 

The Three Silences of Molinas — H. W. Longfellow. 

Ad Vigilen — E. C. Stedman. 

Whittier — A Sonnet — Paul Hamilton Hayne. 



SNOW-BOUND. 

A WINTER IDYL. 



The sun that brief December day 

Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 

And, darkly circled, gave at noon 

A sadder light than v^aning moon. 

Slow tracing down the thickening sky 

Its mute and ominous prophecy, 

A portent seeming less than threat, 

It sank from sight before it set. 

A chill no coat, however stout. 

Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, 

A hard, dull bitterness of cold, 

That checked, mid-vein, the circling race 

Of life-blood in the sharpened face. 

The coming of the snow-storm told. 

The wind blew east; we heard the roar 

Of Ocean on his wintry shore. 

And felt the strong pulse throbbing there 

Beat with low rhythm our inland air. 

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, — 
Brought in the wood from out of doors. 
Littered the stalls, and from the mows 
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows : 
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn; 
And, sharply clashing horn on horn. 
Impatient down the stanchion rows 

(16) 



10 



20 



25 



16 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

The cattle shake their walnut bows ; 

While, peering from his early perch 

Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, 

The cock his crested helmet bent 

And do^Ti his querulous challenge sent. ^^ 

Unwarmed by any sunset light 
, The gray day darkened into night, 

A night made hoary with the swarm 

And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, 

As zigzag wavering to and fro ^^ 

Crossed and recrossed the winged snow : 

And ere the early bedtime came 

The white drift piled the window-frame, 

And through the glass the clothes-line posts 
<^ Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. '^^ 

So all night long the storm roared on : 

The morning broke without a sun ; 

In tiny spherule traced with lines 

Of UTature's geometric signs. 

In starry flake and pellicle *^ 

All day the hoary meteor fell; 

And, when the second morning shone. 

We looked upon a world unknown, 

On nothing we could call our own. 

Around the glistening wonder bent '^^ 

The blue walls of the firmament, 

]^o cloud above, no earth below, — 

A universe of sky and snow ! 

The old familiar sights of ours 

Took marvelous shapes ; strange domes and towers ^^ 



, SNOW-BOUND 17 

Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, 

Or garden-wall or belt of wood ; 

A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, 

A fenceless drift what once was road; 

The bridle-post an old man sat ^^ 

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat ; 

The w^ell-curb had a Chinese roof; 

And even the -long sweep, high aloof, 

In its slant splendor, seemed to tell 

Of Pisa's leaning miracle. ^^ 

A prompt, decisive man, no breath 
Our father wasted : ^' Boys, a path ! " 
Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy 
Count such a summons less than joy?) 
Our buskins on our feet we drew ; ^^ 

With mittened hands, and caps drawn low, 
To guard our necks and ears from snow, 
We cut the solid whiteness through ; 
And, where the drift was deepest, made 
A tunnel walled and overlaid '^^ 

With dazzling crystal : we had read 
Of rare Aladdin's Avondrous cave. 
And to our own his name we gave. 
With many a wish the luck were ours 
To test his lamp's supernal powers. ^^ 

We reached the barn with merry din. 
And roused the prisoned brutes within. 
The old horse thrust his long head out. 
And grave with wonder gazed about ; 
The cock his lusty greeting said, ^^ 

2— 



18 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

And forth his speckled harem led; 

The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, 

And mild reproach of hunger looked; 

The horned patriarch of the sheep, 

Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep, ^ 

Shook his sage head with gesture mute, 

And emphasized with stamp of foot. 

All day the gusty north-wind bore 

The loosening drift its breath before; 

Low circling round its southern zone, ^' 

The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone. 

'No church-bell lent its Christian tone 

To the savage air, no social smoke 

Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. 

A solitude made more intense ^^^ 

By dreary-voiced elements, 

The shrieking of the mindless wind, 

The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind. 

And on the glass the unmeaning beat 

Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. ^^^ 

Beyond the circle of our hearth 

No welcome sound of toil or mirth 

Unbound the spell, and testified 

Of human life and thought outside. 

We minded that the sharpest ear ^^^ 

The buried brooklet could not hear. 

The music of whose liquid lip 

Had been to us companionship. 

And, in our lonely life, had grown 

To have an almost human tone. no 



SNOW-BOUND 



19 



As night drew on, and, from the crest 
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, 
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank 
From sight beneath the smothering bank, 
We piled with care our nightly stack 
Of wood against the chimney-back, — 
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 
And on its top the stout back-stick ; 
The knotty forestick laid apart, 
And filled between with curious art 
The ragged brush ; then, hovering near, 
We watched the first red blaze appear, 
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 
Until the old, rude-furnished room 
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom ; 
AVhile radiant with a mimic flame 
Outside the sparkling drift became. 
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree 
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. 
The crane and pendent trammels showed, 
The Turk's heads on the andirons glowed ; 
While childish fancy, prompt to tell 
The meaning of the miracle, 
Whispered the old rhyme : '' Under the tree, 
When fire outdoors hums merrily, 
There the ivitches are making tea." 

The moon above the eastern wood 
Shone at its full; the hill-range stood 
Transfigured in the silver flood. 



125 



130 



145 



20 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, 

Dead white, save where some sharp ravine 

Took shadow, or the sombre green 

Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 

Against the whiteness of their back. ^^^ 

For such a world and such a night 

Most fitting that unwarming light, 

Wliicli only seemed where'er it fell 

To make the coldness visible. 

Shut in from all the world without, ^^^ 

We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 

Content to let the north-wind roar 

In baffled rage at pane and door. 

While the red logs before us beat 

The frost-line back with tropic heat; . ^^^ 

And ever, when a louder blast 

Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 

The merrier up its roaring draught 

The great throat of the chimney laughed. 

The house-dog on his paws outspread ^^^ 

Laid to the fire his drowsy head. 

The cat's dark silhouette on the w^all 

A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; 

And, for the winter fireside meet. 

Between the andirons' straddling feet, ^''^ 

The mug of cider simmered slow. 

The apples sputtered in a row. 

And, close at hand, the basket stood 

With nuts from brown October's wood. 



S]S^OW- BOUND 21 

AVhat matter how the night behaved ? ^^^ 

What matter how tlie north-wind raved ? 

niow high, blow low, not all its snow 

Conld quench our hearth-iire's ruddy glow. 

O Time and Change! — with hair as gray 

As 'was my sire's that winter day, ^^^ 

JIow strange it seems, with so much gone 

Of life and love, to still live on ! 

Ah, brother ! only I and thou 

.\re left of all that circle now, — 

The dear home faces whereu])on ^^^ 

Tliat fitful firelight paled and shone. 

Henceforward, listen as we will, 

The voices of that hearth are still ; 

Took where we may, tlie wide eartli o'er, 

Those lighted faces smile no more. ^•*'- 

We tread the paths their feet have worn, 

We sit beneath their orchard trees. 

We hear, like them, the hum of bees 
And rustle of the bladed corn ; 
We turn the pages that they read, -^''^ 

Their written words w^e linger o'er. 
But in the sun they cast no shade, 
'No voice is heard, no sign is made, 

^0 step is on the conscious floor ! 
A"et Love will dream and Faith will trust ^***^ 

(Since He wdio knows our need is just) 
That somehow^, somewhere, meet we must. 
Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress-trees ! 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 



205 



22 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

N^or looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play ! 
^Yl\o hath not learned, in hours of faith, 

The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 

And Love can never lose its own ! 

We sped the time with stories old, 
AVrought puzzles out, and riddles told, 
Or stammered from our school-book lore 
" The chief of Gambia's golden shore." 
How often since, Avhen all the land 
Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand, 
As if a far-blown trumpet stirred 
The languorous, sin-sick air, I heard 
'^ Does not the voice of reason cry. 

Claim the first right uiliicli Nature gave. 
From the red scourge of bondage fly, 

Nor deign to live a hardened slaver^ 
Our father rode again his ride 
On Memphremagog's wooded side ; 
Sat down again to moose and samp 
In trapper's hut and Indian camp ; 
Lived o'er the old idyllic ease 
Beneath St. Francois' hemlock trees ; 
Again for him the moonlight shone ^^^ 

On !N'orman cap and bodiced zone ; 
Again he heard the violin play 
A\'hlch led the village dance away, 
And mingled in its merry whirl 
The grandam anrl the laughing girl. 235 



220 



225 



s:^row- BOUND 



23 



Or, nearer home, our steps he led 
Where Salisbury's level marshes spread 

Mile-wide as flies the laden bee; ^ 
Where merry mowers, hale and strong, 
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along 

The low green prairies of the sea. 
We shared the fishing off Boar's Head, 
And round the rocky Isles of Shoals 
The hake-broil on the driftwood coals ; 
The chowder on the sand-beach made, 
Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot, 
With spoons of clam-shell from the pot. 
We heard the talcs of witchcraft old. 
And dream and sign and marvel told 
To sleepy listeners as they lay 
Stretched idly on the salted hay. 
Adrift along the winding shores. 

When favoring breezes deigned to blow 
The square sail of the gundalow. 
And idle lay the useless oars. 

Our mother, while she, turned her wheel 
Or run the new-knit stocking-hccl. 
Told how the Indian hordes came down 
At midnight on Cocheco town, 
And ho^v her own great-uncle bore 
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. 
Eecalling, in her fitting phrase, 
So rich and picturesque and free 
(The common unrhj^ned poetry 
Of simple life and country ways). 



240 



245 



250 



255 



265 



270 



24 THE CRAI^E CLASSICS 

The story of her early days, — 
She made us welcome to her home ; 
Old hearths grew wide to give us room ; 
We stole with her a frightened look 
At the gray wizard's conjuring-book. 
The fame whereof went far and wide 
Through all the simple country-side ; 
* We heard the hawks at twilight play, 
The boat-horn on Piscataqua, 

The loon's weird laughter far away ; ^^^ 

We fished her little trout-brook, kne^v 
AVhat flowers in wood and meadow grew, 
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown 
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down, 
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay ^^^ 

The ducks' black squadron anchored lay, 
And heard the wild geese calling loud 
Beneath the gray [NTovember cloud. 
Then, haply, with a look more grave. 
And soberer tone, some tale she gave ^^^ 

From painful Sewel's ancient tome. 
Beloved in every Quaker home, 
Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom. 
Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint, — 
Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint ! — ^^^ 

Who, when the dreary calms prevailed, 
And water-butt and bread-cask^ failed. 
And cruel, hungry eyes pursued 
His portly presence, mad for food, 
With dark hints muttered under breath ^^^ 

Of casting lots for life or death, 



SITOW-BOUXD 25 



Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies, 

To be himself the sacrifice. 

Then, suddenly, as if to save 

The good man from his living grave, 

A ripple on the water grew, 

A school of porpoise flashed in view. 

^^ Take, eat," he said, ^^ and be content ; 

These fishes in my stead are sent 

By Him who gave the tangled ram 

To spare the child of Abraham." 

Our uncle, innocent of books. 

Was rich in lore of fields and brooks, 

The ancient teachers never dumb 

Of N'ature's unhoused lyceum. 

In moons and tides and weather wise, 

He read the clouds as ]>rophecies. 

And foul or fair could well divine. 

By many an occult hint and sign, 

Holding the cunning-warded keys 

To all the woodcraft mysteries ; 

Himself to !N'ature's heart so near 

That all her voices in his ear 

Of beast or bird had meanings clear, 

Like Apollonius of old, 

Who knew the tales the sparrows told. 

Or Hermes, who interpreted 

^Vhat the sage cranes of ^N'ilus said ; 

A simple, guileless, childlike man. 

Content to live where life began; 

Strong only on his native grounds, 



3or. 



315 



320 



325 



26 THE CEANE CLASSICS 

The little world of sights and sounds 

"Whose girdle was the parish bounds, 

Whereof his fondly partial pride 

The common features magnified, ^^^ 

As Surrey hills to mountains grew 

In White of Selborne's loving view, — 

He told how teal and loon he shot, 

And how the eagle's eggs he got, 

The feats on pond and river done, ^^^ 

The prodigies of rod and gun ; 

Till, warming with the tales he told, 

Forgotten was the outside cold, 

The bitter wind unheeded blew, 

Erom ripening corn the pigeons flew, ^^^ 

Tlie partridge drummed i' the wood, the mink 

Went fishing down the river-briuk. 

In fields with bean or clover gay. 

The woodchuck, like a hermit gray. 

Peered from the doorway of his cell ; "^^ 

The muskrat plied the mason's trade. 
And tier by tier his mud-walls laid ; 
And from the shagbark overhead 

The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell. 

'Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer ^^^ 

And voice in dreams I see and hear, — 

The sweetest woman ever Fate 

Perverse denied a household mate, 

A^Tio, lonely, homeless, not the less 

Pound peace in love's unselfishness, ^^^ 

And welcome Avhereso'er she went. 



SI^OW- BOUND 



27 



A calm and gracious element, 
Whose presence seemed the sweet income 
And womanly atmosphere of home, 
Called up her girlhood memories, 
The huskings and the apple-bees. 
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails, 
Weaving through all the poor details 
And homespun warp of circumstance 
A golden woof -thread of romance. 
For well she kept her genial mood 
And simple faith of maidenhood ; 
Before her still a cloud-land lay, 
The mirage loomed across her way; 
The morning dew, that dried so soon 
With others, glistened at her noon ; 
Through years of toil and soil and care, 
From glossy tress to thin gray hair, 
All unprofaned she held apart 
The virgin fancies of the heart. 
Be shame to him of woman born 
Who had for such but thought of scorn. 

Tliere, too, our elder sister plied 
Her evening task the stand beside : 
A full, rich nature, free to trust. 
Truthful, and almost sternly just. 
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act. 
And make her generous thought a fact, 
Keeping with many a light disguise 
The secret of self-=^acrifice. 
O heart sore-tried ! thou hast the best 



360 



3G5 



370 



375 



380 



385 



390 



28 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

That Heaven itself could give thee, — rest, 
Kest from all bitter thoughts and things ! 
How many a poor one's blessing went 
With thee below^ the low green tent 
AM lose curtain never outward swings ! 



As one who held herself a part 
Of all she saw, and let her heart 

Against the household bosom lean. 
Upon the motley-braided mat ^^^ 

Our youngest and our dearest sat, 
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, 
Xow bathed within the fadeless green 
And holy peace of Paradise. 
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill, ^^^ 

Or from the shade of saintly pahns. 

Or silver reach of river calms. 
Do those large eyes behold me still ? 
With me one little year ago: — 
The chill weight of the winter snow ^^^ 

For months upon her grave has lain ; 
And now, Avhen summer south-winds blow, 

And brier and harebell bloom again, 
I tread the pleasant paths we trod, 
I see the violet-sprinkled sod, *^^ 

Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak 
The hillside flowers she loved to seek, 
A^et following me where'er I went 
With dark eyes full of love's content. 
The birds are glad ; the brier-rose fills ^^^ 

The air with sweetness; all the hills 



420 



SNOW-BOtTN^D 29 



Stretch green to June's unclouded sky ; 

But still I wait with ear and eye 

For something gone which should be nigh, 

A loss in all familiar things, 

In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. 

And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee. 

Am I not richer than of old ? 
Safe in thy immortality, 

What change can reach the wealth I hold ? 

What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
Thy love hath left in trust with me? 
And while in life's afternoon, 

Where cool and long the shadows grow, 
I walk to meet the night that soon 

Shall shape and shadow overflow, 
I cannot feel that thou art far. 
Since near at need the angels are; 



425 



430 



435 



And when the sunset gates unbar, 
Shall I not see thee waiting stand. 

And, white against the evening star. 
The welcome of thy beckoning hand ? 



Brisk wielder of the birch and rule. 

The master of the district school 

Held at the fire his favored place ; ^^^ 

Its warm glow lit a laughing face 

Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared 

The uncertain prophecy of beard. 

He teased the mitten-blinded cat, 

Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat, ^"^^ 

Sang songs, and told us what befalls 



450 



460 



30 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

In classic Dartmouth's college halls. 

Born the wild Northern hills among, 

From whence his yeoman father wrung 

By patient toil subsistence scant, 

ISTot competence and yet not want, 

He early gained the power to pay 

His cheerful, self-reliant way; 

Could doff at ease his scholar's gown 

To peddle wares from town to town ; 

Or through the long vacation's reach 

In lonely lowland districts teach, 

Where all the droll experience found 

At stranger hearths in boarding roimd. 

The moonlit skater's keen delight, 

The sleigh-drive through the frosty night. 

The rustic party, with its rough 

Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff. 

And whirling plate, and forfeits paid. 

His winter task a pastime made. 

Happy the snow-locked homes wherein 

He tuned his merry violin. 

Or played the athlete in the barn, 

Or held the good dame's winding yarn. 

Or mirth-provoking versions told ^"^ 

Of classic legends rare and old. 

Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome 

Had all the commonplace of home. 

And little seemed at best the odds 

'Twixt Yankee peddlers and old gods ; ^"^^ 

Where Pindus-born Arachthus took 

The guise of any grist-mill brook, 



465 



485 



490 



SNOW -BOUND " 31 

And dread Olympus at his will 

Became a huclvleberry hill. 

A careless boy that night he seemed; '^^^ 

But at his desk he had the look 
And air of one who wisely schemed, 

And hostage from the future took 

In trained thought and lore of book. 
Large-brained, clear-eyed, — of such as he 
Shall freedom's young apostles be, 
Who, following in War's bloody trail, 
Shall every lingering wrong assail; 
All chains from limb and spirit strike, 
Uplift the black and white alike; 
Scatter before their swift advance 
The darkness and the ignorance, 
The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth. 
Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth. 
Made murder pastime, and the hell 
Of prison-torture possible; 
The cruel lie of caste refute, 
Old forms remould, and substitute 
For Slavery's lash the freeman's will. 
For blind routine, wise-handed skill ; 
A school-house plant on every hill, 
Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence 
The quick Avires of intelligence ; 
Till IsTorth and South together brought 
Shall own the same electric thought, 
In peace a common flag salute, 
And, side by side in labor's free 



32 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

And unresentful rivalry, 

Harvest the fields wherein they fought. 

Another guest that winter night ^'^^ 

Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light. 

Unmarked by time, and yet not young, 

The honeyed music of her tongue 

And words of meekness scarcely told 

A nature passionate and bold, ^^^ 

Strong, self -concentred, spurning guide. 

Its milder features dwarfed beside 

Her unbent will's majestic pride. 

She sat among us, at the best, 

A not unfeared, half -welcome guest, ^^^ 

Rebuking with her cultured phrase 

Our homeliness of words and ways. 

A certain pard-like, treacherous grace 

Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash, 

Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash ; ^^^ 

And under low brows, black with night, 

Rayed out at times a dangerous light ; 

The sharp heat-lightnings of her face 

Presaging ill to him whom Fate 

Condemned to share her love or hate. ^^^ 

A woman tropical, intense 

Tn thought and act, in soul and sense, 

She blended in a like degree 

The vixen and the devotee. 

Revealing with each freak or feint ~ ^^'^ 

The temper of Petruchio's Kate, 

The raptures of Siena's saint- 



SNOW-BOUND 



33 



Her tapering hand and rounded wrist 

Had facile power to form a fist ; 

The warm J dark languish of her eyes ^"^'^ 

Was never safe from wrath's surprise. 

Brows saintly calm and lips devout 

Knew every change of scowl and pout ; 

And the sweet voice had notes more high 

And shrill for social battle-cry. *^** 

Since then what old cathedral town 

Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown, 

What convent-gate has held its lock 

Against the challenge of her knock ! 

Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares, ^^^ 

Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs, 

Gray olive slopes of hills that hem 

Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem, 

Or startling on her desert throne 

The crazy Queen of Lebanon ^^*^ 

With claims fantastic as her own, 

Her tireless feet have held their way ; 

And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray. 

She watches under Eastern skies. 

With hope each day renewed and fresh, ^^^ 

The Lord's quick coming in the flesh, 
^^llereof she dreams and prophesies ! 
Where'er her troubled path may be. 

The Lord's sweet pity with her go ! 
The outward wayward life, we see, ^^^ 

The hidden springs we may not know. 
'Not is it given iis to discern 

What threads the fatal sisters spun, 

—3 



ISO 



34 TILE CRANE CLASSICS 

Throngli what ancestral years has run 
The sorrow with the woman born, 
What forged her crnel chain of mood^^, 
What set her feet in solitudes. 

And held the love within her mute, 
AVhat mingled madness in the blood, 

A lifelong discord and annoy, 

Water of tears with oil of joy, 
And hid within the folded bud 

Perversities of flower and fruit. 
It is not ours to separate 
The tangled skein of will and fate, 
To show what metes and bounds should stand 
Upon the soul's debatable land, 
And between choice and Providence 
Divide the circle of events; 

But He who knows our frame is just, 
Merciful and compassionate. 
And full of sweet assurances 
And hope for all the language is. 

That He remembereth we are dusl ! 



At last the great logs, crumbling low, ^^^ 

Sent out a dull and duller glow^, 

The bull's-eye watch that hung in view, 

Ticking its weary circuit through, 

Pointed with mutely warning sign 

Its black hand to the hour of nine. ^^^ 

That sigTi the pleasant circle broke : 

^Ey uncle ceased his pipe to smoke, 

Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray, 



585 



SNOW-BOUND 35 



605 



610 



And laid it tenderly away, 
Then roused himself to safely cover 
The dull red brand with ashes over. 
And while, with care, our mother laid 
The work aside, her steps she stayed 
One moment, seeking to express 
Her grateful sense of happiness 
For food and shelter, warmth and health, 
And love's contentment more than wealth, 
With simple wishes (not the weak. 
Vain prayers which no fulfillment seek. 
But such as warm the generous heart, 
O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part) 
That none might lack, that bitter night, 
For bread and clothing, warmth and light. 



Within our beds a%vhile we heard 

The wind that round the gables roared, ®^^ 

W^ith now and then a ruder shock, 

^^Tiich made our very bedsteads rock. 

We heard the loosened clapboards tost, 

The board-nails snapping in the frost ; 

And on us, through the implastered wall ®*^ 

Felt the lightsifted snow-flakes fall ; 

But sleep stole on, as sleep will do 

^Vhen hearts are light and life is new ; 

Faint and more faint the murmurs grew. 

Till in the summer-land of dreams ^^s 

They softened to the sound of streams. 

Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars, 

And lapsing waves on quiet shores. 



640 



36 THE CRAXE CLASSICS 

Xext morn we wakened with the shont 
• Of merry voices high and clear ; 
And saw the teamsters drawing near 
To hreak the drifted highways ont. 
Down the long hillside treading slow 
We saw the half-buried oxen go, 
Shaking the snow from heads uptost, 
Their straining nostrils white with frost. 
Before our door the straggling train 
Drew np, an added team to gain. 
The elders threshed their hands a-cold, 

Passed, with the cider-mng, their jokes 

From lip to lip; the younger folks 
Down the loose snow-hanks, wrestling, rolled, 
Then toiled again the cavalcade 

O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine, 

And woodland paths that wound between ^'^^ 

Low-drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed. 
From every barn a team afoot, 
At every house a new recruit, 
Where, drawn by iSTature's subtlest law. 
Haply the watchful young men saw 
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls 
And curious eyes of merry girls. 
Lifting their hands in mock defence 
Against the snow-balls' compliments. 
And reading in each missive tost 
The charm which Fden never lost. 

We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound ; 
And, following where the teamsters led, 



656 



SNOW-BOUND 

The wise old Doctor went liis round, 
Just pausing at our door to sav, 
In the brief autocratic way 
Of one who, prompt at Duty's call, 
Was free to urge her claim on all, 

That some poor neighbor sick abed 
xVt night our mother's aid would need ; 
For, one in generous thought and deed, 

What mattered in the sufferer's sight 

The Quaker matron's inward light, 
The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed ? 
All hearts confess the saints elect 

Who, twain in faith, in love agree, 
And melt not in an acid sect 

The Christian pearl of charity ! 

So days went on : a week had passed 

Since the great world was heard from last. 

The Almanac we studied o'er. 

Read and reread our little store 

Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score ; 

One harmless novel, mostly hid 

From younger eyes, a book forbid, 

And poetry, (or good or bad, 

A single book was all we had,) 

Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse, 
A stranger to the heathen ISTine, 
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine, 

The wars of David and the Jev/s. 

At last the floundering carrier bore 

The village paper to our door. 



37 



660 



665 



680 



685 



38 THE CEANE CLASSICS 

Lo ! broadening outward as we read, 
To warmer zones the horizon spread ; 
In panoramic length imrolled 
We saw the marvel that it told. 
Before us passed the painted Creeks, 

And daft McGregor on his raids 

In Costa Eica's everglades. 
And up Taygetus winding slow 
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks, 
A Turk's head at each saddle-bow ! 
Welcome to us its week-old news. 
Its corner for the rustic Muse, 

Its monthly gauge of snow and rain. 
Its record, mingling in a breath 
The wedding-bell and dirge of death ; 
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale. 
The latest culprit sent to jail; 
Its hue-and-cry of stolen and lost. 
Its vendue sales and goods at cost, 

And traffic calling loud for gain. 
We felt the stir of hall and street, 
The pulse of life that round us beat ; 
The chill embargo of the snow 
Was melted in the genial glow ; 
Wide swung again our ice-locked door, 
x\nd all the world was ours once more ! 

Clasp, Angel of the backward look 
And folded wings of ashen gray 
And voice of echoes far away. 

The brazen covers of thy book ; 



SNOW-BOUND 



39 



730 



The weird palimpsest old and vast, 
Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past ; 
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow 
The characters of joy and woe ; 
The monographs of ontlived years. 
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears, 

Green hills of life that slope to death, > 
And haunts of 'home, whose vistaed trees 
Shade off to mournful cypresses 

With the white amaranths underneath. 
Even while I look, T can but heed 

The restless sands' incessant fall. 
Importunate hours that hours succeed, 
Each clamorous with its own sharp need. 

And duty keeping pace with all. 
Shut down and clasp the heavy lids: 
I hear again the voice that bids '^^^ 

The dreamer leave his dream midway 
For larger hopes and graver fears : 
Life greatens in these later years, 
The century's aloe flowers to-day ! 

Yet, haply, in some lull of life, '^^^ 

Some Truce of God which breaks its strife, 
The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, 

Dreaming in throngful city ways 
Of winter joys his boyhood knew ; 

And dear and early friends — the few ''*■"' 

AVho yet remain — shall pause to view 

These Flemish pictures of old days ; 
Sit with me by the homestead hearth, 



750 



40 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

And stretch the hands of memory forth 
. To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze ; 
And thanks nntraced to lips unknown 
Shall greet me like the odors blown 
From unseen meadows newly mown^ 
Or lilies floating in some pond, 
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond ; 
The traveller owns the grateful sense 
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, 
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare 
The benediction of the air. 



NOTES. 

Line 6. Explain " mute and ominous prophecy." 

10. Of what material was the '^ homespun" clothing made? 

46. What is a " hoary meteor " ? How long did the storm con- 
tinue? 

54-65. Contrast with first three stanzas of Lowell's " First Snoiv- 
FalL" 

65. The Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy, is a beautiful white marble 
bell-tower. The remarkable thing about it is its inclination from 
a perpendicular line. It is 180 feet high and 14 feet out of plumb. 
It was built in the 12th century, by a German artist, Wilhelm of 
Innsbruck. The cause of the deflection is supposed to be due to the 
character of the soil in which the foundation rests. 

77. The story of Aladdin and his lamp may be found in The 
Arabian Nights' Entertainments, of which there are many editions. 

90. EgypVs Amiin, or Ammon, was a deity represented in the form 
of a ram. 

97-99. Whittier's early home was out of sight of any other 
farm-house. 

136. The crane and pendent trammels showed. From the iron 
crane fastened to the chimney- jamb, hooks were hung, on which to 
hang pots to be swung oyer the fire for cooking. 



SNOW-BOUND 41 

156, Clean-wingrd. The dust brushed off with a turkey-wing 
brush, 

181, 182, This poem was written in 1865, Its author lived for 
twenty-seven years, 

183. Matthew Whittier died m 1883. 

215 and 220-223 are from Sarah Wentworth-Morton's poem, The 
African Chief. It was published in The American Preceptor, a school 
text used in Whittier's boyhood. 

224. The elder Whittier when a young man had traveled across 
the wilderness to Canada, and had passed some time in the French 
Canadian villages. 

226, Samp — coarse hominy. 

256. Whittier's mother's home had been in Somersworth, N. H., 
where the Indians had made their savage inroads in an early day, 

270, The gray wizard's conjuring -hook. Bantam, the sorcerer, 
whose book Whittier had in his possession. It was a copy of Cor- 
nelius Agrippa's Magic, printed in 1651. The full title of the book 
is, Three Books of Occult Philosophy : by Henry Cornelius Agrippa; 
Knight, Doctor of Both Laics, Counsellor to Caesar's Sacred Majesty, 
and Judge of the Prerogative Court. 

286. William Sewel was the historian of the Quakers. 

289. Thomas Chalkley was a Quaker preacher of English parent- 
age. He lived in Philadelphia. His own account of the incident 
referred to him, as published in his Journal, is as follows: 

" To stop their murmuring, I told them they should not need to 
cast lots, which was usual in such cases, which of us should die first, 
for I would freely offer up my life to do them good. One said, 
'God bless you! I will not eat any of you.' Another said, 'He 
would die before he would eat any of me;' and so said several. I can 
truly say, on that occasion, at that time, my life was not dear to 
me, and that I was serious and ingenuous in my proposition; and 
as I was leaning over the side of the vessel, thoughtfully consider- 
ing my proposal to the company, and looking in my mind to Him 
that made me, a very large dolphin came up towards the top or sur- 
face of the water, and looked me in the face; and I called the people 
to put a hook into the sea, and take him, for here is one come to 
redeem me (I said to them). And they put a hook into the sea, 
and the fish readily took it, and they caught him. He was longer 
than myeelf. T think he was about six feet long, and the largest 
that ever I saw. This rdainly showed us that we ought not to dis- 
trust the providence of the Almighty, The people were quieted by 



42 THE CRATvTE CLASSICS 

this act of Providence, and murmured no more. We caught enough 
to eat plentifully of, till we got into the capes of Delaware." 

306. See Genesis, xxii: 13. 
- 307. Our Uncle. Moses Whittier. Whittier says the uncle was 
more than half a believer in witchcraft. 

310. What is Nature's unhoused lyceumf 

320. A philosopher belonging to the first century, A. D., believed 
to have talked with birds and animals. 

322. Hermes, an Egyptian who revived mathematics and art 
among the people of the Nile. 

332. Gilbert White wrote the Natural History of Selhorne, Eng- 
land. It was a minute description of a small locality, but so de- 
lightfully written that it still remains a classic. 

350. Aunt Mercy Hussey. One of those helpful women who live 
for others. 

378. Mary Whittier. 

396. Elizabeth Whittier. 

404. She died in 1864; Mary died in 1860. 

439. George Haskell, of Harvard, Mass.; was a student of Dart- 
mouth College. Later became a physician. He moved to Illinois, 
and helped to found Shurtleff College. Afterward, in New Jersey, 
he aided in founding an industrial school. 

476. Pindus is a chain of mountains running north and south 
through Greece. Arachthus is a river whose source is in these 
mountains. 

478. Olympus. The mountain Avhereon the gods of Grecian my- 
thology dwelt. 

485-509. Notice the beauty of this prophecy. 

510. Another guest. Harriet Livermore. daughter of Judge 
Livermore, of New Hampshire. Whittier says of her that she was 
" a young woman of fine natural ability, enthusiastic, eccentric, with 
slight control over a violent temper;" that she nas " ready to exhort 
in prayer-meetings and dance in a ball-room." She was a Seventh- 
Day Adventist; and spent the most of her long life traveling over 
Europe and Asia, proclaiming this belief. In her last years she 
was found wandering Avith a tribe of Arabs in Syria, to whom in 
her madness she became a prophetess. 



SNOW-BOUND 4t3 

536. See Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. 

537. Saint Catharine of Siena, who made a vow of silence for 
three years. 

555. Lady Hester Stanhope, who lived on Mount Lebanon. A 
woman as singular as Harriet Livermore, who lived with her for 
some time. 

568. Fatal Sisters. -Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, the three 
fates, of Greek mythology. Clotho spun the thread of life; Lachesis 
twisted it; and Atropos cut it with her shears. 

585-589. See Psalms, ciii:14. 

659. Doctor Weld, of Haverhill, who lived to be ninety-six. 

676. The almanac was the only annual in the Whittier home 
then. There was one weekly newspaper and a very few books. 

683. Thomas Ellwood was a Quaker in England, a friend of John 
Milton, and the one who suggested Paradise Regained. He himself 
wrote an epic poem entitled Davideis, the life of King David. 

693. Referring to the removal of the Creek Indians from Georgia 
to the region west of the Mississippi. 

694. Sir Gregor McGregor, a " daft " Scotchman, made an at- 
tempt to settle a colony in Costa Rica in 1822. 

697. Taygetus is a mountain in Greece. Near it is the district 
of Maina, a locality of bad repute owing to the robbers who in- 
habit it. Ypsilanti, a Greek patriot, gathered his cavalry from this 
region for the struggle in which Greece threw off the Turkish rule. 

719. Palimpsest. A parchment twice written on, the first writ- 
ing having been erased, 

740. The Truce of God was an order of the Church in the year 
1040, by which barons were forbidden to attack one another between 
sunset of Wednesday and sunrise the following Monday, or vipon any 
church feast day or fast day, or to attack any laborer in the field. 

747. Flemish art was characterized by homely interiors. 



44 THE CKAJN^E CLASSICS 



AMOKG THE HILLS. 

PRELUDE. 

[This poem contains a complete picture of farm-life as it is and 
has been, and farm-life as it may and should be. 

There are many exquisite word-pictures of New Hampshire scenery 
in the poem. 

The poem with its prelude presents a series of contrasts. Let the 
pupil hunt them out.] 

Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold 

That tawnj Incas for their gardens wrought, 

Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod, 

And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowers 

Hang motionless upon their upright staves, ^ 

The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind, 

Wing-weary with its long flight from the south, 

Unf elt ; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf 

With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams. 

Confesses it. The locust by the wall ' ^ 

Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm. 

A single hay-cart down the dusty road 

Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep 

On the load's top. Against the neighboring hill, 

Huddled along the stone wall's shady side, ^^ 

The sheep show white, as if a snow drift still 

Defied the dog-star. Through the open door 

A drowsy smell of flowers — gray heliotrope, 

And white sweet clover, and shv mignonette — 

Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends -'^ 

To the pervading symphony of peace. 



AMONG THE HILLS 45 

^o time is this for hands long over-worn 

To task their strength : and (nnto Him be praise 

AVho giveth quietness !) the stress and strain 

Of years that did the work of eentnries '^ 

Have ceased, and Ave can draw onr ])roath once more 

Freely and fnll. So, as yon harvesters 

Make glad their nooning underneath tlie elms 

With tale and riddle and old snatch of song, 

I lay aside grave themes, and idly turn ^^ 

The leaves of memory's sketch-book, dreaming o'er 

Old summer pictures of the quiet hills, 

And human life, as quiet, at their feet. 

And yet not idly all. A farmer's son, 

Proud of field-lore and harvest craft; and feeling "^ 

All their fine possibilities, how rich 

And restful even poverty and toil 

Become when beauty, harmony, and love 

Sit at their hundjle hearth as angels sat 

At evening in the patriarch's tent, when man ^^ 

]\Iakes labor noble, and his farmer's frock 

The symbol of a Christian chivalry. 

Tender and just and generous to her 

Who clothes with grace all duty; still, T know 

Too well the picture has another side. "^^ 

How wearily the grind of toil goes on 

Where love is wanting, how the eye and ear 

And heart are starved amidst the plenitude 

Of nature, and how hard and colorless 

Is life without an atmosphere. I look ^^ 

Across the lapse of half a century. 



46 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

And call to mind old homesteads, where no flower 
Told that tlie Rpring had come, but evil weeds, 
Nightshade and rough-leaved bnrdock, in the place 
Of the sweet doorway greeting of the rose 
And honeysnckle, where the house walls seemed 
Blistering in sun, without a tree or vine 
To cast the tremulous shadow of its leaves 
Across the curtainless windows from whose panes 
Fluttered the signal rags of shif tlessness ; 
Within, the cluttered kitchen floor, unwashed 
(Broom-clean I think thev called it) ; the best room 
Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the air 
In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless 
Save the inevitable sampler hung 
Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece, 
A green-haired woman, peonj-cheeked, beneath 
Impossible willows ; the wide-throated hearth 
Bristling with faded pine-boughs half concealing 
The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's back ; 
iVnd, in sad keeping with all things about them, 
Shrill, querulous women, sour and sullen men, 
Untidy, loveless, old before their time. 
With scarce a human interest save their oavu 
- Monotonous round of small economies, 
Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood ; 
Blind to the beauty every^^here revealed. 
Treading the-May-flowers with regardless feet ; 
For them the song-sparrow and the bobolink 
Sang not, nor winds made music in the leaves ; 
For them in vain October's holocaust 
Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills, 



55 



65 



80 



AMONG THE HILL8 47 



The sacramental mystery of the woods. 
Church-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers, 
P)Ut grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew-rent, 
Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls 
And winter pork w^ith the least possible outlay 
Of salt and sanctity; in daily life 
Showing as little actual comprehension 
Of Christian charity and love and duty, 
As if the Sermon on the Mount had been 
Outdated like a last year's almanac : 
Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields. 
And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless. 
The veriest straggler limping on his rounds. 
The sun and air his sole inheritance. 
Laughed at poverty that paid its taxes, 
And hugged his rags in self-complacency ! 



90 



95 



'Not such should be the homesteads of a land 
Where w^hoso wisely wills and acts may dwell 
As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred state. 
With beauty, art, taste, culture, books, to make 
His hour of leisure richer than a life 
Of fourscore to the barons of old time ; 
Our yeoman should be equal to his home, 
Set in the fair, green valleys, purple walled, 
A man to match his mountains, not to creep 
Dwarfed and abased below them. I would fain 
In this light way (of which I needs must own 
With the knife-grinder of whom Canning sings, 
'^ Story, God bless you ! I have none to tell you ! ") 
Invite the eye to see and heart to feel 



105 



no 



115 



120 



48 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

The beautv and the joy within their reach, — 

Home, and home loves, and the beatitudes 

Of natnre free to alL Haply in years 

That wait to take the places of our own. 

Heard where some breezy balcony looks down 

On happy hom.es, or where the lake in the moon 

Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair as Euth, 

In the old Hebrew pastoral, at the feet 

Of Boaz, even this simple lay of mine 

May seem the burden of a prophecy. 

Finding its late fulfillment in a change 

Slow as the oak's growth, lifting manhood up 

Through broader culture, finer manners, love, ^^^ 

And reverence, to the level of the hills. 

O Golden Age, whose light is of the deL^YT\, 

And not of sunset, forward, not behind. 

Flood the new heavens and earth, and with thee bring 

All the old virtues, whatsoever things ^^^ 

Are pure and honest and of good repute, 

But add thereto whatever bard has sung 

Or seer has told of when in trance and dream 

They saw^ the Happy Isles of prophecy ! 

Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide ^■^'"^ 

Between the right and wrong ; but give the heart 

The freedom of its fair inheritance ; 

Let the poor prisoner, cramped and starved so long. 

At ISTature's table feast his ear and eye 

With joy and wonder; let all harmonies ^ '^ 

Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon 

The princely guest, whether in soft attire 



AMONG THE HILLS 49 

Of leisiu'o clud, or the cdniNt^ frock of loil. 

And, Iciidiiia- life to ihc dead form of faitli, 

(iivc liiniiaii nature rcNcrcnce for the sake ^■^'* 

Of One wJio ]»oi'e it, niakinii' it divine 

AVith the ineffahle tenderness of (Jod; 

Let common need, the hi'otherliood of prayer. 

The heirship of an unknown destiny, 

The unsohed mystery round ahout ns, make ^^'^ 

A man more precious than tlie i»ohl of Ophir. 

Sacred, inviolate, nnto whom all things 

Should minister, as outward types and signs 

Of the eternal beauty which fulfills 

The one great purpose of creation, Love, ^''^ 

Tlie sole necessity of Earth and Heaven ! 

a:\iong the hills. 

For weeks the clouds had raked the hills 

And vexed the vales with raining, 
And all the woods were sad with mist. 

And all the brooks complaining. 

At last, a sudden night-storm tore 

The mountain-veils asunder, 
And swept the valleys clean l^efore 

The besom of the thunder. 

Through Sandwich Xotch the west-wind sang 

Good morrow to the cotter ; , 
And once again Chocorua's horn 

Of shadow pierced the water. 
4— 



IGO 



1G5 



5'0 THE CEAXE CLASSICS 

Above his broad lake Ossipee^ 
Once more the sunshine wearing, 

Stooped, tracing on that silver shield 
His grim armorial bearing. 

Clear drawn against the hard bine sky 
The peaks had winter's keenness ; 

And, close on antnmn's frost, the vales 
Tlad more than June's fresh greenness. 

Again the sodden forest floors 

With golden lights were checkered, 

Once more rejoicing leaves in wind 
And sunshine danced and flickered. 

It was as if the summer's late 

Atoning for its sadness 
Had borrowed every season's charm, 

To end its days in gladness. 

I call to mind those banded vales 

Of shadoAv and of shining, 
Through which, my hostess at my side. 

I drove in day's declining. 

AVe held our sideling way above 
The river's whitening shallows. 

By homesteads old, with wide-flung barns 
Swept through and through by SAvallows, ■ — 

V^y maple orchards, belts of pine 

And larches climbing darkly 
The mountain slopes, and, over all. 

The great peaks rising starkly. 



180 



AA[ON(^ THE HILLS 



51 



You should have seen that km^' hill-range 
With gaps of hrightness riven, — 

How through each pass and hollow streamed 
The purpling lights of heaven, — 

Ivivers of gold-mist flowing down 
From far celestial fountains, — 

Hie great sun flaming through the rifts 
Beyond the wall of mountains ! 

AVe paused at last where home-bound cows 
Brought down the pasture's treasure, 

And in the barn the rhythmic flails 
l^eat out a harvest measur(\ 

We heard the night-hawk's sullen plunge, 
The crow his tree-mates calling : 

The shadows lengthening down the slopes 
About our feet were falling. 

And through them smote the level sun 

In broken lines of splendor, 
Touched the gray rocks and made the green 

Of the shorn grass more tender. 

The maples bending o'er the gate, 
Their arch of leaves just tinted 

With yellow warmth, the golden glow 
Of coming autumn hinted. 

Keen white between the farm-house showed. 
And smiled on porch and trellis 

The fair democracy of flowers 
That equals cot and palace. 



210 



230 



THE CRAXE CLASSICS 

And weavl]ii>' onrlands iV)i' her dog, 

'Twixt cliidinos and caresses, 
A liuinaii liower of childhood shoo^v 

The sunshine ivom her tresses. 

On either hand we saw the signs 

Of fancy and of shrewdness, 
Where taste had wound its arms of vines 

Round thrift's uncomely rudeness. 

The sun-hrown farmer iil his frock 

Shook hands, and called to Mary : 
Bare-armed, as Juno might, she came, ^^^ 

AATiite-aproned, from her dairy. 

Tier air, her smile, her motions, told 

Of womanly completeness ; 
A music as of household songs 

Was in her voice of sweetness. ^'"^'^ 

^ot beautiful in curve and line 

But something more and better, 
The secret charm eluding art, 

Its spirit, nof its letter ; — 

An inborn grace that nothing lacked -*^ 

Of culture or appliance, — 
The warmth of genial courtes)', 

The calm of self-reliance. 

Before her queenly womanhood 

How dared our hostess utter 250 

The paltry errand of her need 

To buy her fresh-churned butter ? 



AMO^^G THE HILLS 58 

She led the way Avith housewife pride, 

Her goodly store disclosing, 
Full tenderly the golden balls - 255 

A\'ith practised hands disposing. 

Then, while along the western hills 

We watched the changeful glory 
Of sunset, on our homeward way, 

I heard her simple story. ^eo 

The early crickets sang ; the stream 

Plashed through my friend's narration: 

Her rustic patois of the hills 
Lost in "my free translation. 

'''' More wise," she said, ^^ than those who swarm ^^^ 

Our hills in middle summer. 
She came, when June's first roses blow^. 

To greet the early comer. 

'Trom school and ball and rout she came. 

The city's fair, pale daughter, -'^ 

To drink the wine of mountain air 
Beside the Bearcamp Water. 

^^ Her step grew firmer on the hills 

That watch our homesteads over ; 
On cheek and lip, from summer fields, ~'^ 

She caught the bloom of clover. 

" For health comes sparkling in the streams 

From cool Chocorua stealing: 
There 's iron in our ^Northern winds ; 

Our pines are trees of healing. ^^*^ 



64 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

^^ She sat beneath the broad-armed elms 
That skirt the mowing-meadow, 

And watched the gentle west-wind weave 
The grass with shine and shadow. 

" Beside her, from the summer heat 
To share her grateful screening, 

With forehead bared, the farmer stood, 
Upon his pitchfork leaning. 

" Framed in its damp, dark locks, his face 
Had nothing mean or common, — 

Strong, manly, true, the tenderness 
And pride beloved of woman. 

" She looked up, glowing with the health 
The country air had brought her, 

And, laughing, said : ' You lack a wife, 
Your mother lacks a daughter. 



2S5 



295 



'te^ 



^^ ^ To mend your frock and bake your bread 

You do not need a lady : 
Be' sure among these brown old homes 

Is some one waiting ready, — 

'^ ' Some fair, sweet girl, with skilful hand 
And cheerful heart for treasure, 

Who never played with ivory keys, - 
Or danced the polka's measure.' 

'' He bent his black brows to a frown, 
He set his white teeth tightly. 

' 'T is well,' he said, ^ for one like you 
To choose for me so lightly. 



AMONG THE HILLS 55 



510 



315 



" ' You think, because my life is rude, 

I take no note of sweetness : 
I tell you love lias naught to do 

With meetness or unmeetness. 

'^ ^ Itself its best excuse, it asks 

'No leave of pride or fashion 
When silken zone or homespun frock 

It stirs with throbs of passion. 

'^ ' You think me deaf and blind : you bring 

Your winning graces hither 
As free as if from cradle-time 

We two had played together. ^^^ 

" ' You tempt me with your laughing eyes, 

Your cheek of sundown's blushes, 
A motion as of waving grain, 

A music as of thrushes. 

^^ ' The plaything of your summer sport, ^^^ 

The spells you weave around me 
You cannot at your will undo, 

Not leave me as you found me. 



^^ ' You go as lightly as you came. 
Your life is well without me ; 

What care you that these hills will close 
Like prison-walls about me ? 

^^ ' No mood is mine to seek a wife. 
Or daughter for my mother: 

Who loves you loses in that love 
All power to love another ! 



330 



56 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

'^ ' I dare jour pity or your scorn, 

With pride your own exceeding; 
I fling my heart into your lap 

Without a word of pleading.' ^^^ 

'^ She looked up in his face of pain. 

So archly, yet so tender: 
^And if I lend you mine/ she said, 

' Will you forgive the lender ? 

'^ ' ^N'or frock nor tan can hide the man ; ^^^ 

And see you not, my farmer. 
Plow weak and fond a woman waits 

Behind this silken armor ? 

^' ^ I love you : on that love alone. 

And not my worth, presuming, ^^^ 

Will you not trust for summer fruit 

The tree in May-day blooming ? ' 

'^ Alone the hangbird overhead. 

His hair-sw^ung cradle straining, 
Looked down to see love's miracle, — ^^^ 

The giving that is gaining. 

"■ And so the farmer found a wife. 

His mother found a daughter : 
There looks no happier home than hers 

On pleasant Bearcamp Water. 

^^ Flowers spring to blossom where she walks 

The careful ways of duty ; 
Our hard, stiff lines of life with her 

Are flowing curves of beauty. 



360 



AMONG THE HILLS 

'' Our homes are cheerier for lier sake, 
Our door-yards brighter blooming, 

And all about the social air 
Is sweeter for her coming. 

" Unspoken homilies of peace 
Her daily life is preaching ; 

The still refreshment of the dew 
Is her unconscious teaching. 

^' And never tenderer hand than hers 
Unknits the brow of ailing ; 

Her garments to the sick man's ear 
Have music in their trailing. 

'^ And when, in ]:>leasant harvest moons, 
The youthful buskers gather. 

Or sleigh-drives on the mountain ways 
Defy the winter weather, — 

^' In sugar-camps, when south and warm 
The winds of March are blowing. 

And sweetly from its thawing veins 
The maple's blood is flowing, — 

" In summer, where some lilied pond 

Its virgin zone is baring. 
Or where the ruddy autumn fire 

Lights up the apple-paring, — 

^' The coarseness of a ruder time 

Her finer mirth displaces, 
A subtler sense of pleasure fills 

Each rustic sport she graces. 



57 



365 



380 



385 



390 



58 THE. CRANE CLASSICS 

'' Her presence lends its warmth and liealth 

To all who come before it. 
If woman lost us Eden, such » 

As she alone restore it. 

" For larpjer life and wiser aims 

The farmer is her debtor ; 
Who holds to his another's heart 

Must needs be worse or better. 

" Through her his civic service shows 

A purer-toned ambition ; 
'No double consciousness divides 

The man and politician. 

" In party's doubtful ways he trusts 

Her instincts to determine ; 
At the loud polls, the thought of her 

Recalls Christ's Mountain Sermon. 

^' He owns her logic of the heart, 

And wisdom of unreason, 
Supplying, while he doubts and weighs, 

The needed word in season. 

" He sees with pride her richer thought, 

Her fancy's freer ranges; 
And love thus deepened to respect 

Is proof against all changes. 

^^ And if she walks at ease in ways 

His feet are slow to travel, 
And if she reads with cultured eyes 

What his may scarce unravel, 



S95 



410 



415 



420 



AMONG THE HILLS 

^^ Still clearer, for her keener sight 

Of beauty and of wonder, 
He learns the meaning of the hills 

He dwelt from childhood under. 

^^ And higher, warmed with summer lights, 
Or winter-crowned and hoary, 

The rigid horizon lifts for him 
Its inner veils of glory. 

'^ He has his own free, bookless lore, 
The lessons nature taught him, 

The wisdom which the woods and hills 
And toiling men have brought him : 

" The steady force of will whereby 
Her flexile grace seems sweeter ; 

The sturdy counterpoise which makes 
Her woman's life completer : 

" A latent fire of soul which lacks 

Ko breath of love to fan it ; 
And wit, that, like his native brooks. 

Plays over solid granite. 

" How dwarfed against his manliness 

She sees the poor pretension, 
The wants, the aims, the follies, born 

Of fashion and convention ! 

^' How life behind its accidents 

* Stands strong and self-sustaining. 
The human fact transcending all 
The losing and the gaining. 



59 



430 



435 



445 



60 THE CEANE CLASSICS 

'^And so, in grateful interchange 

Of teacher and of hearer, 
Their lives their true distinctness keep 

While daily drawing nearer. 

'^ And if the husband or the wife 

In home's strong light discovers 
Such slight defaults as failed to meet 

The blinded eyes of lovers, 

<^ Why need we care to ask ? — who dreams 

Without their thorns of roses, 
Or wonders that the truest steel 

The readiest spark discloses ? 

'^ For still in mutual sufferance lies 

The secret of true living: 
Love scarce is love that never knows 

The sweetness of forgiving. 

'^ We send the Squire to General Court, 

He takes his young wife thither ; 
Xo prouder man election day 

Eides through the sweet June weather. 

^^ He sees w^ith eyes of manly trust 

All hearts to her inclining ; 
N^ot less for him his household light 

That others share its shining." 

Thus, while my hostess spake, there grew 

Before me, warmer tinted 
And outlined with a tenderer grace, '^^^ 

The picture that she hinted. 



470 



AMO:^Q THE HILLS 61 

The sunset smouldered as we drove 
. Beneath the deep hill-shadows. 
Below us wreaths of white loo- walke<l 

Like ohosts the haunted iU(^adows. ^^^ 

Soundino- the summer night, the stars 
Dro])ped down their golden plummets; 

The pale arc of the i^orthern lights 
Rose o'er the mountain summits, — 

Until, at last, beneath its bridge, ^^^ 

We heard the Bearcamp flowing, 
And saw across the mapled lawn 

The welcome home-lights glowing ; — 

And, musing on the tale T heard, 

'T were well, thought T, if often ^^o 

To rugged farm-life came the gift 

To harmonize and soften ; — 

If more and more we found the troth 

Of fact and fancy plighted, 
And culture's charm and labor's strength *^^ 

In rural homes united, — 

The simple life, the homely hearth, 

With beauty's sphere surrounding, 
And blessing toil where toil abounds 

With graces more abounding. ^^^ 



NOTES. 

Line 2. The Incas were the kings of Peru in the ancient days. 
Preseott says that at Yueay their gardens reproduced plant-life in 
silver and gold. 



62 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

17. The dog-star prevails in the midsummer heat, from the latter 
part of July to September. 

1-21. A perfect picture of a heat-burdened land. 

65. Sampler. A piece of cloth on Mliich various embroidery 
stitches Avere worked; a pattern for young fingers to copy. 

66. Mourning pieces Mere crude attempts at memorial of a de- 
parted loved one. 

81-83. A beautiful figure. 

110. Canning, who later was premier of England, wrot<^ a humor- 
ous poem entitled The Needy Knife-Grinder, a burlesque on a poem 
of Southey's, meant to ridicule the Jacohinfi, a political party in 
England and France about 1797. 

12]. See Ruth, iii. 

134. The Happy Isles, or Fortunate Isles, were imaginary islands 
in the West, according to Greek mythology, set in a warm sea, where 
the sun's declining rays kept them always delightful. Here at last 
came the favorites of the gods to dAvell in endless bliss. See Long- 
fellow's BuUdincj of the Ship : 

"Ah! if our souls but poise and swing 

Like the compass in its brazen ring, 

Ever level and ever true 

To the toil and the task we have to do. 

We shall sail securely and safely reach 

The Fortunate Isles, on whose sliining beach 

The sights we see and the sounds we hear 

Will be those of joy and not of fear." 

165. Sandwich Notch, Chocorua mountain, Ossipce lake and 
r>earcamp river are all geographical features of Xew Hampshire, 
just at the beginning of the White monntain region. A mountain in 
lliis locality is named for 'Whittier. 

207. Flails are still used in remote places in New England. 

237-248. An ideal of womanhood is presented in these three 
stanzas. 

263. J*>ilois. Dialect of the illiterate classes. 

361-376. Another ideal picture of womanliness. 

465. The term General Court is given to the State Legislature in 
New Hampshire and ]Nrassachusetts. 



THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ 63 



THE PEAYER OF AGASSIZ. 

On the isle of Penikese, 

Ringed about by sapphire seas, 

Fanned by breezes salt and cool, 

Stood the Master with his school. 

Over sails that not in vain ^ 

Wooed the west-wind's steady strain. 

Line of coast that low and far 

Stretched its nndnlatinjo- bar, 

Wings aslant across the rim 

Of the waves they stooped to skim, ^^ 

Rock and isle and glistening l)ay, 

Fell the beantiful white day. 

Said the Master to the yontli : 

" We have come in search of trnlli, 

Trying Avitli uncertain key ^^ 

Door by door of mystery ; 

We are reaching, through His laAvs, 

To the garment-hem of Cause, 

Him, the endless, unbegun. 

The IJnnamable, the One ^^ 

Light of all our light the Source, 

Life of life, and *Force of force. 

As with fingers of the blind. 

We are groping here to find 

What the hieroglyphics mean ^^ 

Of the Unseen in the seen, 



64 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

What tlie Tlioiight which imderlies 

Nature's masking and -disgnise, 

What it i^ that hides beneath 

J31ight and bloom and birtb ayd death. "" 

]]v past efforts unavailing, 

Doubt and error, loss and failing, 

Of our weakness made aware, 

On the threshold of our task 

Let us light and guidance ask, ^^' 

Let us pause in silent prayer ! " 

Then the Master in his place 

Bowed his head a little space. 

And the leaves by soft airs stirred, 

Lapse of wave and cry of bird, "^^ 

Left the solemn hush unbroken 

Of that wordless prayer unspoken, 

While its wish, on earth unsaid. 

Rose to heaven interpreted. 

As, in life's best hours, we hear ^^ 

By the spirit's finer ear 

His low voice within us, thus 

The All-Father heareth us ; 

And His holy ear we pain 

With our noisy w^ords and vain. ^^ 

Not for Him our violence 

Storming at the gates of sense. 

His the primal language, his 

The eternal silences ! 

Even the careless heart was moved, ^^ 

And the doubting gave assent, 



60 



THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ 65 



With a gesture reverent, 
To the Master well-beloved. 
As thin mists are glorified 
Bj the light they cannot hide, 
All who gazed npon him saw, 
Through its veil of tender awe; 
How his face was still uplit 
By the old sweet look of it. 
Hopeful, ti'ustful, full of cheer. 
And the love that casts out fear. 
AVho the secret ma.y declare 
Of that brief, unuttered prayer ? 
Did the shade before him come 
Of th' inevitable doom. 
Of the end of earth so near, 
And Eternitv's new year ? 



Tn the lap of sheltering seas 

Rests the isle of Penikese ; 

But the lord of the domain "^^ 

Comes not to his own again : 

Where the eyes that follow fail, 

On a vaster sea his sail 

Drifts beyond our beck and hail. 

Other lips within its bound 

Shall the laws of life expound ; 

Other eyes from rock and shell 

Read the world's old riddles well : 

But when breezes light and bland 

Blow from Simmier's blossomed land, 

When the air is glad with wings, 



80 



85 



80 



95 



100 



66 THE CKAI^E OLASSICS 

And the blithe song-sparrow sings, 
Many an eye with his still face 
Shall the living ones displace;, 
Man^'- an ear the word shall seek 
He alone could fitly speak. 
And one name forevermore 
Shall be uttered o'er and o'er 
By the waves that kiss the shore, 
By the curlew's whistle sent 
Down the cool, sea-scented air ; 
In all voices known to her, 
!N"ature owns her worshipper, 
Half in triumph, half lament. 
Thither Love shall tearful turn, 
Friendship pause uncovered there, 
And the wisest reverence learn 
From the Master's silent prayer. 

NOTES. 

Line 1. Penikese Island, in Buzzard's Bay, wa.s given to Agassiz 
by John Anderson for the use of a summer school of natural his- 
tory. The school was opened in a large barn. INIrs. Agassiz in her" 
biography of her husband, says : 

"Agassiz had arranged no programme of exercises, trusting to the 
interest of the occasion to suggest what might best be said or done. 
But, as he looked upon his pupils gathered there to study nature 
Avith him, by an impulse as natural as it was unpremeditated he 
called upon them to join in silently asking God's blessing on their 
work together. The pause was broken by the first words of an ad- 
dress no less fervent than its unspoken prelude." 

Agassiz died in December, 1873, The school was opened the sum- 
mer before. 

45-54. These lines suggest Whittier's Quaker belief regarding 
silent worship. 

Notice the harmony of sound and the use of many liquid letters in 
this poem. 



HOW THE KOBm CAME 



67 



HOW THE ROBIK CAME. 

AN ALGONQUIN LEGEND. 

Happy young friends, sit by me, 
Under May's blown apple-tree. 
While these home-birds in and out 
Through the blossoms flit about. 
Hear a story, strange and old. 
By the wild red Indians told, 
How the robin came to be : 
Once a great chief left his son, — 
Well-beloved, his only one, — 
When the boy was well-nigh grown. 
In the trial-lodge alone. 
Left for tortures long and slow 
Youths like him must undergo. 
Who their pride of manhood test. 
Lacking wf.ter, food, and rest. 

Seven days the fast he kept. 

Seven nights he never slept. 

Then the young boy, wrung with pain. 

Weak from nature's overstrain. 

Faltering, moaned a low complaint : 

" Spare, me, father, for I faint ! " 

But the chieftain, haughty-eyed, 

Hid his pity in his pride. 

" You shall be a hunter good. 

Knowing Lever lack of food : 



10 



15 



20 



25 



68 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

You shall be a Avarrior great, 
Wise as fox and strong as boar; 
Many scalps your belt shall wear, 
If with patient heart you wait 
T3ravely till yonr task is done. 
Better you should starving die 
Than that boy and squaw should cry 
Shame upon your father's son !" 

When next morn the sun's first rays 

Glistened on the hemlock sprays, 

Straight that lodge the old chief sought, 

And boiled samp and moose meat brought. 

" Rise and eat, my son ! " he said. 

Lo, he found the poor boy dead ! 

As with grief his grave they made, 

And his bow beside him laid, 

Pipe, and knife, and wampum-braid. 

On the lodge-top overhead, 

Preening smooth its breast of red 

And the brown coat that it wore, 

Sat a bird, unknown before. 

And as if with human tongue, 

'' Mourn me not," it said, or sung : 

" I, a bird, am still your son. 

Happier than if hunter fleet, 

Or a brave, before your feet 

Laying scalps in battle won. 

Priend of man, my song shall cheer 

Lodge and corn-land ; hovering near. 

To each wigwam T shall bring 



35 



40 



50 



55 



HOW THE KOBIX ('A.ME 69 

Tidings of the coming spring; 

Every child my voice shall know 

In the moon of melting snow, 

When the maple's red bud swells, 

And the wind-flower lifts its bells. ^^ 

As their fond companion 

Men shall henceforth own your son, 

And my song shall testify 

That of human kin am I." 



Thus the Indian legend saith 
How, at first, the robin came 
With a sweeter life and death. 
Bird for boy, and still the same. 
If my young friends doubt that this 
Is the robin's genesis, 
^ot in vain is still the myth 
If a truth be found therewith : 
Unto gentleness belong 
Gifts unknown to pride and wrong ; 
Happier far than hate is praise, — 
He who sings than he who slays. 



65 



70 



75 



70 THE CTJATiTE CLASSICS 



TELLmG THE BEES. 

[It was once a custom in rural regions of New England when a 
death occurred in the family, to tell the bees at once and drape their 
hives in mourning. This was done to prevent their swarming and 
leaving their hives for new homes.] 

Here is the place ; right over the hill 

Runs the path I took; 
You can see the gap in the old wall still. 

And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. 

There is the house, with the gate red-barred, ^ 

And the poplars tall ; 
And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard, 

And the white horns tossing above the wall. 

There are the beehives ranged in the sun ; 

And down by the brink ^^ 

Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed o'errun. 

Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink. 

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, 

Heavy and slow ; 
And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, ^^ 

And the same brook sings of a year ago. 

There 's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze ; 

And the June sun warm 
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees. 

Setting, as then, over Fernside farm. 20 



TELLING THE BEES 71 

I mind me how with a lover's care 

From my Sunday coat 
I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my hair, 

And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat. 

Since we parted, a month had passed, — 25 

To love, a year ; 
Down through the beeches I looked at last 

On the little red gate and the well-sweep near. 

I can see it all now, — the slantwise rain 

Of light through the leaves, 3o 

The sundown's blaze on her window-pane, 

The bloom of her roses under the eaves. 

Just the same as a month before, — 

The house and the trees. 
The barn's browm gable, the vine by the door, — ^'' 

]i^othing changed but the hive of bees. 

Before them, under the garden wall, 

Forward and back. 
Went drearily singing the chore-girl small. 

Draping each hive with a shred of black. ^^ 

Trembling, I listened: the summer sun 

Had the chill of snow ; 
For I knew she was telling the bees of one 

Gone on the journey we all must go I 

Then I said to myself, '' My Mary weeps ^*"'' 

For the dead to-day : 
Haply her blind grandsire sleeps 

The fret and the pain of his age away." 



72 THE CRANE CLxiSSICS 

But her dog whined low ; on the doorway sill, 

With his cane to his chin, ^^ 

The old man sat ; and the chore-girl still 
Sung to the bees stealing out and in. 

And the song she was singing ever since 

In my ear sounds on : — 
" Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence ! *^ 

Mistress Mary is dead and gone ! '' 



SOXGS OF LABOR 73 



SO^s^GS OF LABOR. 

[These poems were first printed in magazines in 1845 and 1S4G. 
Some of the forms of labor here written of have since ceased to ex- 
ist; iniprovements and new inventions have displaced them. The 
poems were published in a volume in 1850. The Dedication was 
written for this volume.] 

I. DEDICATION. 
I WOULD the gift I offer here 

Might graces from thy favor take, 
And, seen through Friendship's atmosphere. 
On softened lines and coloring, wear 
The unaccustomed light of beauty, for thy sake. ^ 

Few leaves of Fancy's spring remain : 

But what I have I give to thee. 
The o'er-sunned bloom of summer's plain, 
And paler flowers, the latter rain 
Calls from the westering slope of life's autumnal lea. ^^ 

Above the fallen groves of green, 

AVliere youth's enchanted forest stood, 
Dry root and mossed trunk between, 
A sober after-growth is seen. 
As springs the pine where falls the gay-leafed maple 
wood ! ^^ 

Yet birds will sing, and breezes play 
Their leaf -harps in the sombre tree ; 
And throudi the bleak and wintrv dav 



74 THE CRANE CLASSICS • '' , 

It keeps its steady green alway, • — 
So, even my after-thouglits may have a cliarm for thee. ^^ 

Art's perfect forms no moral need, 
And beauty is its own excuse ; 
But for the dull and flowerless weed 
Some healing virtue still must plead, 
And the rough ore must find its honors in its use. '^'^ 

So haply these, my simple lays 

Of homely toil, may serve to show 
The orchard bloom ajid tasselled maize 
That skirt and gladden duty's ways, 
The unsung beauty hid life's common things below. ^^ 

Haply from them the toiler, bent 

Above his forge or plough, may gain 
A manlier spirit of content, 
And fee] that life is wisest spent 
Wiere the strong working hand makes strong the working 
brain. ^^ 

The doom which to the guilty pair 

Without the walls of Eden came. 
Transforming sinless ease to care 
And rugged toil, no more shall bear 
The burden of old crime, or mark of primal shame. '*^ 

A blessing now, a curse no more ; 

Since He, whose name we breathe with awe, 
The coarse mechanic vesture wore, 
A [K>or man toiling with the poor. 
In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the same la^. ** 



SO^sGS or LABOR 
II. THE SHOEMAKERS. 
Ho ! workers of tlie old time styled 

The Gentle Craft of Leather ! 
Young brothers of the ancient guild, 

Stand forth once more together ! 
Call out again your long array, 
In the olden merry manner ! 
Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day, 
Fling out your blazoned banner ! 

Eap, rap ! upon the well-worn stone 

How falls the polished hammer ! 
Kap, rap ! the measured sound has grown 

A quick and merry clamor. 
Now shape the sole ! now deftly (iurl 

The glossy vamp around it, 
~ And bless the while the bright-eyed girl 

Whose gentle fingers bound it ! 

For you, along the Spanish main 

A hundred keels are ploughing; 
For you, the Indian on the plain 

His lasso-coil is throwing; 
For you, deep glens with hemlock dark 

The woodman's fire is lighting; 
For you, upon the oak's gray bark, 

The woodman's axe is smiting. 

For you, from Carolina's pine 
The rosin-gum is stealing; 

For you, the dark-eyed Florentine 
Her silken skein is reeling; 



50 



55 



60 



6S 



70 



80 



76 ' THE CRANE CLASSICS 

For jou, tlie clizzj goatlierd roams 

His rugged Alpine ledges ; 
For you, round all lier shepherd homes, 

Bloom England's thorny hedges. 

The foremost still, hy day or nighf, 

On moated moimd or heather, 
Where'er the need of trampled right 

Brought toiling men together; 
Where the free burghers from the wall 

Defied the mail-clad master, 
Than yours, at Freedom's trumpet-call, 

'No craftsman rallied faster. *^ 



Let foplings sneer, let fools deride. 

Ye heed no idle scorner; 
Free hands and hearts are still your pride, 

And duty done, your honor. 
Ye dare to trust, for honest fame. 

The jury Time empanels, 
And lea^e to truth each noble name 

Which glorifies your annals. 



90 



95 



Thy songs, Hans Sachs, are living yet. 

In strong and hearty German ; 
And Bloomfield's lay, and Gifford's wit. 

And patriot fame of Sherman ; 
Still from his book, a mystic seer, ^ 

The soul of Behmen teaches, 
And England's priestcraft shakes to hear '^^^ 

Of Fox's leathern breeches. 



SONGS OF LABOR 

The foot is yours; where'er it falls, 

It treads yonr well-wrought leather 
On earthen floor, in marble halls, 

On carpet, or on heather. 
Still there the sweetest charm is found 

Of matron grace or vestal's. 
As Hebe's foot bore nectar round 

Among the old celestials ! 

Kap, rap ! your stout and rough brogan, 

With footsteps slow and weary. 
May wander where the sky's blue span 

Shuts down upon the prairie. 
'On Beauty's foot your slip])ers glance. 

By Saratoga's fountains. 
Or twinkle down the summer dance 

Beneath the Crystal Mountains ! 

The red brick to the mason's hand. 
The brown earth to the tiller's, 
The shoe in yours shall wealth command, 

Like fairy Cinderella's 1 
As they who shunned the household maid 

Beheld the crown upon her, 
So all shall see your toil repaid 

With hearth and home and honor. 

Then let the toast be freely quaffed. 
In water cool and brimming, — 

" All honor to the good old Craft, 
Its merry men and women ! " 



77 



105 



110 



115 



120 



125 



135 



140 



78 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

Call out again your long arraj^, 
In the old time's pleasant manner : 

Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day, 
Fling out his blazoned banner! 

III. THE FISHERMEX. 

Hurrah ! the seaward breezes 

Sweep down the bay amain ; 
Heave up, my lads, the anchor ! 

Run up the sail again ! 
Leave to the lubber landsmen 

The rail-car and the steed ; 
•The stars of heaven shall guide us, 

The breath of heaven shall speed. 

From the hilltop looks the steej)le, 

And the lighthouse from the sand ; 
And the scattered pines are waving 

Their farewell from the land. ^*^ 

One glance, my lads, behind us. 

For the homes we leave one sigh. 
Ere we take the change and chances 

Of the ocean and the sky. 

IsTow, brothers, for the icebergs ^^^ 

Of frozen Labrador, 
Floating spectral in the moonshine, 

Along the low, black shore ! 
Where like snow the gannet's feathers 

On Brador's rocks are shed, ^^^ 

And the noisy murr are flying. 

Like black scuds, overhead; 



SOICaS OF LABOR 79 

^^Hiere in mist the rock is hiding, 

And the sharp reef lurks below, 
And the white squall smites in summer, ^^^ 

And the autumn tempest blow ; 
AVhere through gray and rolling vapor, 

From evening unto morn, 
A thousand boats are hailing, 

Horn answering unto horn. ^^^ 

Hurrah ! for the Ked Island, 

With the white cross on its crown ! 
Hurrah! for Meccatina, 

And its mountains bare and brown ! 
Where the Caribou's tall antlers ^~^ 

O'er the dwarf -wood freely toss. 
And the footstep of the Mickmack 

Has no sound upon the moss. 

There we'll drop our lines, and gather 

Old Ocean's treasures in, '^'^^ 

Where'er the mottled mackerel 

Turns up a steel-dark fin. 
The sea 's our field of harvest. 

Its scaly tribes our grain ; 
We'll reap the teeming waters ^^® 

As at home they reap the plain ! 

Our wet hands spread the carpet. 

And light the hearth of home ; 
From our fish, as in the old time, 

The silver coin shall come. ^^^ 

As the demon fled the chamber 



190 



80 THE CEANE CLASSICS 

Where the fish of Tobit lay, 
So ours from all our dwellings 
Shall frighten Want away. 

Tliongh the mist upon our jackets 

In the bitter air congeals, 
And our lines wind stiff and slowly 

From off the frozen reels ; 
Though the fog be dark around us, 

And the storm blow high and loud, 
We will whistle down the wild wind. 

And laugh beneath the cloud ! 

In the darkness as in daylight, 

On the water as on land, 
God's eye is looking on us, 

And beneath us is His hand ! 
Death will find us soon or later. 

On the deck or in the cot ; 
And we cannot meet him better 

Than in working out our lot. ^^^ 

Hurrah ! hurrah ! the west-wind 

Comes freshening down the bay. 
The rising sails are filling ; 

Give way, my lads, give way ! 
Leave the coward landsman clinging ^^^ 

To the dull earth, like a weed ; 
The stars of heaven shall guide us. 

The breath of heaven shall speed ! 



200 



SONGS OF LABOR 

ly. THE LU^IBERMEX. 

Wildly round our woodland quarters 

Sad- voiced Autumn grieves ; 
Thickly down these swelling waters 

Float his fallen leaves. 
Through the tall and naked timber, 

Column-like and old, 
Gleam the sunsets of November, 

From their skies of gold. 

O'er us, to the southland heading, 

Screams the gray wild goose; 
On the night-frost sounds the treading 

Of the brindled moose. 
i^Toiseless creeping, while Ave're sleeping, 

Frost his task-work plies ; 
Soon, his icy bridges heaping, 

Shall our log-piles rise. 

When, with sounds of smothered thunder. 

On some night of rain, 
Lake and river break asunder 

Winter's weakened chain, 
Down the wild March flood shall bear them 

To the saw-mill's wheel, 
Or where Steam, the slave, shall tear them 

With his teeth of steel. 

Be it starlight, be it moonlight. 

In these vales below, 
AMien the earliest beams of sunlight 

Streak the mountain's snow, 



81 



21: 



220 



2S0 



235 



240 



82 THE CPvAXE CLASSICS 

Crisps the hoar-frost, keen and early, 

To our hurrying feet, 
And the forest echoes clearly 

All onr blows repeat. 

^Vh^ere the crystal Amhijejis 

Stretches hroad and clear, 
And Millnoket's pine-black ridges 

Hide the browsing deer ; 
Where, through lakes and wide morasses. 

Or through rocky walls, 
Swift and strong, Penobscot passes 

White with foamy falls ; 

Where, through clouds, are glimpses given 

Of Katahdin's sides, — 
Eock and forest piled to heaven, 

Torn and ploughed by slides ! 
Far below, the Indian trapping, 

In the sunshine warm ; 
Far above, the snow-cloud wrapping 

Half the peak in storm ! 



260 



Where are mossy carpets better 

Than the Persian weaves, 
And than Eastern jDcrfumes sweeter 

Seem the fading leaves ; ^^^ 

And a music wild and solemn. 

Prom the pine-tree's height. 
Rolls its vast and sea-like volume 

On the wind of night ; 



SONGS OF LABOR S3 

Make we here our camp of winter ; ^ " ^ 

And, through sleet and suoav, 
Pitchy knot and h*oeclien s^plintv^r 

On our liearth shall i^low. 
Here, with mirth to lighten duty, 

We shall lack alone ^'^ 

Woman's smile and girlhood's beauty, 

Childhood's lisping tone. 

But their hearth is brighter burning 

For our toil to-day ; 
And the welcome of returning ^^^ 

Shall our loss repay, 
AMien, like seamen from the waters. 

From the woods we come, 
Greeting sisters, wi^■es, and djuighters, 



Angels of our home ! 



'Not for us the measured ringing 

From the village spire, 
Not for us the Sabbath singing 

Of the sweet-voiced choir ; 
Ours the old, majestic temple. 

Where God's brightness shines 
Down the dome so grand and ample, 

Propped by lofty pines ! 

Through each branch-enwoven skylight, 

Speaks He in the breeze, 
As of old beneath the twilight 

Of lost Eden's trees ! 
For His ear, the inward feeling 



285 



295 



84 THE OEANE CLASSICS 

Xeeds no outward tongue ; 
He can see the spirit kneeling ^^® 

While the axe is swnn<i\ 

Heeding truth alone^ and turning 

From the false and dim, 
Lamp of toil or altar burning 

Are alike to Him. ^''^ 

Strike, then, comrades ! Trade is waiting 

On our rugged toil ; 
Far ships waiting for the freighting 

Of our woodland spoil ! 

Ships, whose traffic links these highlands, •^'^' 

Bleak and cold, of ours, 
With the citron-planted islands . 

Of a clime of flowers ; 
To our frosts the tribute bringing 

Of eternal heats; ^'^ 

In our lap of winter flinging 

Tropic fruits and sweets. - 

Cheerlj, on the axe of labor, 

Let the sunbeams dance, 
Better than the flash of sabre ^'^ 

Or the gleam of lance I 
Strike! With every blow is given 

Freer sun and sky, 
And the long-hid earth to heaven 

Looks, with wondering eye ! "-'"^ 

Loud behind us grow the murmurs 
Of the age to come ; 



840 



SONGS OF LABOR 86 

Clang of smiths, and tread of farmers, 

Bearing harvest home ! 
Here her virgin lap with treasures ^^^ 

Shall the green earth fill ; 
Waving wheat and golden maize-ears 

Crown each beechen hill. 

Keep who will the city's alleys, 

Take the smooth-shorn plain ; ^^^ 

Give to us the cedarn valleys, 

Eocks and hills of Maine ! 
In our N^orthland, wild and woody. 

Let us still have part ; 
Rugged nurse and mother sturdy, 

Hold us to thy heart ! 

Oh, our free hearts beat the warmer 

For thy breath of snow ; 
And our tread is all the firmer 

For thy rocks below. 
Freedom, hand in hand with labor, 

Walketh strong and brave ; 
On the forehead of his neighbor 

'No man writeth Slave ! 

Lo, the day breaks ! old Katahdin's 

Pine-trees show its fires, 
^Vhile from these dim forest gardens 

Rise their blackened spires. 
Up, my comrades ! up and doing ! 

Manhood's rugged play 
Still renewing, bravely hewing 

Through the world our way ! 



350 



355 



360 



370 



86 THE CEANE CLASSICS 

V. THE SHIP-BUILDERS. 

The sky is ruddy in the east, 

The earth is gray below, 
And, spectral in the river-mist. 

The ship's white timbers show. 
Then let the sounds of measured stroke 

And grating saw begin ; 
The broad-axe to the gnarled oak, 

The mallet to the pin ! 

Hark ! roars the bellows, blast on blast. 

The sooty smithy jars. 
And fire-sparks, rising far and fast. 

Are fading with the stars. 
All day for us the smith shall stand 

Beside that flashing forge ; 
All day for us his heavy hand 

The groaning anvil scourge. 

From far-off hills, the panting team 

For us is toiling near ; ^^^ 

For us the raftsmen down the stream 

Their island barges steer. 
Rings out for us the axe-man's stroke 

In forests old and still; 
For us the century-circled oak ^^^ 

Falls crashing down his hill. , 

Up ! up ! in nobler toil than ours 

1^0 craftsmen bear a part : 
We make of N'ature's giant powers 

The slaves of human Art. ^^^ 



SOA^GS OF LABOR 87 

Lny rib to rib and Ijeam to beam, 

And drive the treenails free ; 
'Nor faithless joint nor ya^vning seam 

Shall tempt the searching sea ! 



Where'er the keel of our good ship 

The sea's rough field shall plough ; 
Where'er her tossing spars shall drip 

With salt-spray caught below ; 
That ship must heed her master's beck, 

Her helm obey his hand, 
And seamen tread her reeling deck 

As if they trod the land. 

Her oaken ribs the vulture-beak 

Of I^orthern ice may peel ; 
The sunken rock and coral peak 

May grate along her keel ; 
And know we well the painted shell 

A¥e give to wind and wave, 
Must float, the sailor's citadel. 

Or sink, the sailor's grave ! 

Ho ! strike away the bars and blocks, 

And set the good ship free ! 
Why lingers on these dusty rocks 

The young bride of the sea ? 
Look ! how she moves a down the grooves. 

In graceful beauty now ! 
How lowly on the breast she loves 

Sinks down her virgin prow ! 



300 



3U5 



88 THE CKANE CLASSICS 

God bless lier ! wlieresoe'er the breeze 

Her snowy wing sliall fan, ^^^"^ 

Aside the frozen Hebrides 

Or sultry Hindostan ! 
AVhere'er, in mart or on the main, 

With peaceful flag unfurled, 
She helps to wind the silken chain '*^*' 

Of commerce round the world ! 

Speed on the ship ! But let her bear 

'No merchandise of sin, 
i^o groaning cargo of despair 

Her roomy hold within ; *25 

No Lethean drug for Eastern lands, 

Nov poison-draught for ours ; 
But honest fruits of toiling hands 

And !N"ature's sun and showers. 

Be hers the Prairie's golden grain, *^^ 

The Desert's golden sand. 
The clustered fruits of sunny Spain, 

The spice of Morning-land ! 
Her pathway on the open main 

May blessings folloAV free, *^.^ 

And glad hearts welcome back again 

Her white sails from the sea ! 

VI. THE DROVERS. 

TiiEOUGH heat and cold, and shower and sun. 

Still onward cheerily driving! 
There 's life alone in duty done, **^ 

And rest alone in striving. 



SOIS^GS OF LABOR 



89 



But see 1 the day is closing cool, 

The woods are dim before us ; 
The white fog of the wayside pool 

Is creeping slowly o'er \is. 

The night is falling, comrades mine, 

Our footsore beasts are weary, 
And through yon elms the tavern sign 

Looks out upon us cheery. 
The landlord beckons from his door, 

His beechen fire is glowing ; 
These ample barns, with feed in store, 

Are filled to overfiowing. 

From many a valley frowned across 

By brows of rugged mountains ; 
From hillsides where, through spongy moss, 

Gush out the river fountains ; 
From quiet farm-fields, green and low, 

And bright with blooming clover ; 
From vales of corn the wandering crow 

:N'o richer hovers over, — 

Day after day our way has been 

O'er many a hill and hollow; 
By lake and stream, by wood and glen. 

Our stately drove we follow. 
Through dust-clouds rising thick and dun 

As smoke of battle o'er us, 
Their white horns glisten in the sun, 

Like plumes and crests before us. 



445 



450 



455 



460 



465 



90 THE CEA^^E CLASSICS 

We see them sIoavIv climb the hill, 

As slow behind it sinking; 
Or, thronging close, from roadside rill, 

Or sunny lakelet, drinking. 
ISTow crowding in the narrow road, 

In thick and struggling masses. 
They glare upon the teamster's load. 

Or rattling coach that passes. 



Anon, with toss of horn and tail. 

And paw of hoof, and bellow. 
They leap some farmer's broken pale. 

O'er meadow-close or fallow. 
Forth comes the startled goodman ; forth 

Wife, children, house-dog sally. 
Till once more on their dusty path 

The baffled truants rally. 

We drive no starvelings, scraggy grown. 

Loose-legged, and ribbed and bony. 
Like those who grind their noses down 

On pastures bare and stony, — 
Lank oxen, rough as Indian dogs. 

And cows too lean for shadows. 
Disputing feebly with the frogs 

The crop of saw-grass meadows ! 

In our good drove, so sleek and fair, 

'No bones of leanness rattle, 
No tottering hide-bound ghosts are there. 

Or Pharaoh's evil cattle. 
Each stately beeve bespeaks the hand 



470 



485 



495 



SONGS OF LABOR 91 

That fed him iiiirepiiiiiig ; 
The fatness of a goodly hind ^^^ 

Tn each dnn hide i^ shining. 

We've sought them Avhere, in warmest nooks, 

The freshest feed is growing, 
By sweetest springs and clearest brooks 

Through honeysuckle flowing ; ^^^ 

Wherever hillsides, sloping south, 

Are bright with early grasses. 
Or, tracking green the lowland's drouth, 

The mountain streamlet passes. 

But now the day is closing cool, ^'^^ 

The woods are dim liefore us, 
The white fog of the wayside pool 

Is creeping slowly o'er us. 
The cricket to the frog's bassoon 

His shrillest time is kee])ing; ^^^ 

The sickle of yon setting moon 

The meadow-mist is reaping. 

The night is falling, comrades mine. 

Our footsore beasts are weary, 
xind through yon elms the tavern sign 

Looks out upon us cheery. 
To-morrow, eastward with our charge 

We '11 go to meet the dawning, 
Ere yet the pines of Kearsarge 

Have seen the sun of morning. 

When snow-flakes o'er the frozen earth. 
Instead of birds are flitting; 



520 



525 



530 



540 



92 THE CKAIs^E CLASSICS 

"\ATien children throng the glowing hearth, 

And quiet wives are knitting; 
While in the firelight strong and clear 

Young eyes of pleasure glisten, 
To tales of all we see and hear 

The ears of home shall listen. 

By many a xS^orthern lake and hill, 

From many a mountain pasture, 
Shall fancy play the Drover still. 

And speed the long night faster. 
Then let us on through shower and sun. 

And heat and cold, be driving ; 
There 's life alone in duty done, 

And rest alone in striving. 

VII. THE HUSKEE.^. 

It was late in mild October, and tlie long autumnal rain 
Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with grass 

again ; 
The first sharp frost had fallen, leaving all the woodlands 

gay 

With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the meadow-flowers 
of May. ^^^ 

Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the sun rose broad 

and red, 
At first a rayless disk of fire, he brightened as he sped ; 
Yet, even his noontide glory fell chastened and subdued. 
On the cornfields and the orchards, and softly pictured 

wood. 



SO^^GS OF LABOK 93 

And all that quiet afternoon, slow sloping to the night, ^'^'^'^ 
He wove with golden shuttle the haze with yellow light; 
Slanting through the painted beeches, he glorified the hill ; 
And, beneath it, pond ;u]d meadow lay brighter, greener 
still. 

And shouting boys in Avoodland haunts caught glimpses of 

that sky. 
Flecked by the many-tinted leaves, and laughed, they 

knew not wh}", °^^ 

And school-girls gay with aster-flowers, beside tlie meadow 

brooks. 
Mingled the glow of autumn with the sunshine of sweet 

looks. 

From spire and barn looked westerly the ])atient weather- 
cocks ; 

But even the birches on the hill stood motionless as rocks. 

N^o sonnd was in the woodlands, save the squirrel's drop- 
ping shell, ^^'^ 

And the yellow leaves among the bonghs, low rustling as 
they fell. 

The summer grains were harvested; the stubble-fields lay 

Where Jnne winds rolled, in light and shade, tlie pale 

green waves of rye; 
But still, on gentle hill-slopes, in valleys fringed with wood, 
Ungathered, bleaching in the sun, the henvy corn crop 

stood. ^ '''" 

Eent low, by autumn's wind and rain, through husks that, 
dry and sere, 



94 THE CEANE CEASSTCS 

TTiifolded from tlieir ripened charge, shone out the yellow 

ear; 
Beneath, the turnip lav concealed, in many a verdant fold, 
And glistened in the slanting light tlio jrnmpkin's sphero- 

of gold. 

Tliere wrought the hnsy harvesters ; and many a creaking 

warn ^ ' " 

Bore slowly to the long barn-floor its load of hnsk and 

grain ; 
Till broad and red, as when he rose, the sun sank down, at 

last, 
And like a merry guest's farewell, the day in brightness 

passed. 

.Vnd lo ! as through tlie western pines, on meadow, stream, 

and pond, 
Flamed the red radiance of a sky, set all afire beyond, '^"'^ 
Slowly o'er the eastern sea-bluffs a milder glory shone, 
And the sunset and the moonrise were mingled into one ! 

As thus into the quiet night the twilight lapsed away, 
And deeper in the brightening moon the tranquil shadows 

lay, 
From many a brown old farm-house, and hamlet without 

name, ^^^ 

Their milking and their home-tasks done, the merry hnsk- 

ers came. 

Swung o'er the heaped-u]) harvest, from pitchforks in the 

mow, 
Shone dimly down the lanterns on the pleasant scene below ; 
The growing pile of husks behind, the golden ears before, 



SOXGS OF LABOR 95 

And laughing eyes and busy hands and brown cheeks glim- 
mering o'er. ^'^^ 

Half hidden, in a quiet nook, serene of look and heart, 
'Talking their old times over, the old men sat a])art ; 
While up and down the nnhnsked ])ile, or nestling in its 

shade, 
At hide-and-seek, with langh and shont, the happy children 

played. 

T^rged by the good host's daughter, a maiden yonng and 

fair, " ^ " ' 590 

Lifting to light her sweet bine eyes and jn-ide of soft 

brown hair, 
The master of the village school, sleek of hair and smooth 

of tongue, 
To the quaint tune of some old psalm, a husking-ballad 

sung. 

VIII. THE CORN- SONG. 

Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard ! 

Heap high the golden corn ! ^^^' 

'No richer gift has Autumn poured 

From out lie-r lavish horn ! 

Let other lands, exulting, glean 

The apple from the pine. 
The orange from its glossy green, ^'^^ 

The cluster from the vine ; 

We better love the hardy gift 

Our rugged vales bestow. 
To cheer us when the storm shall drift 

Our harvest-fields with snow. ^*^^ 



610 



96 THE CRANE CLASSICS 

Through vales of grass and meads of flowers 

Our ploughs their furrows made, 
While on the hills the sun and showers 

Of changeful April played. 

We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain 

Beneath the sun of May, 
And frightened from our sprouting grain 

The robher crows away. 

All through the long, bright days of June 

Its leaves grew green and fair, ^^^ 

And waved in hot midsummer's noon 
Its soft and yellow hair. 

And now, with Autumn's moonlit eves, 

Its harvest-time has come, 
We pluck away the frosted leaves, ^'^ 

And bear the treasure home- 
There, when the snows about us drift, 

And winter winds are cold, 
Fair hands the broken grain shall sift. 

And knead its meal of gold. ®^® 

Let vapid idlers loll in silk 

Around their costly board: 
Give us the bowl of samp and nulk. 

By homespun beauty poured ! 

Where'er the wide old ]?:itchen lienrth ^'-^^ 

Sends up its smoky curls. 
Who will not thank the kindly earth, 

And bless our farmer "iris ! 



SOI^-GS OF LABOR 97 

Then shame on all the proud and vain. 

Whose folly laughs to scorn ®^*^ 

The blessing of our hardy grain, 
Our wealth of golden corn ! 

Let earth withhold her goodly root, 

Let mildew blight the rye, 
Give to the worm the orchard's fruit, ^^^ 

The wheat-field to the fly: 

But let the good old crop adorn 

The hills our fathers trod ; 
Still let us, for His golden corn, 

Send up our thanks to God ! ^^^ 



Line 52. Saint Crispin's Day is October 25. The story goes that 
in the third century Crispin and his brother Crispinian were both 
preachers of the gospel while they followed shoemaking for a living. 
They both were martyrs to the cause of Christ. 

62. The northern coast of South America was called the Spanish 
main when it first came into the possession of Spain. 

72. Florence, Italy, was for a long time noted for the manufac- 
ture of sewing-silk. When the industry Avas begun in North Hamp- 
ton, Massachusetts, the name Florence was given to the manufactur- 
ing village. 

82. The author probably refers to the struggles of the manu- 
facturing towns of Italy, and Germany and England to free them- 
selves from the power of the barons. 

94. Reference to Hans Sachs will be found in Longfellow's poem, 
entitled Nuremlmrg. 

96. Pvobert Bloomfield was an English poet and William Gifford 
an English wit and satirist. Both were shoemakers by trade. Gif- 
ford was the first editor of the Quarterly Review. 
7— 



98 THE CKANE CLASSICS 

97. Roger Sherman, once a shoemaker at New Milford, Connecti- 
cut, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. 

99. Jacob Behmen was a German mystic of the 17th century. 

101. George Fox was the founder of the Quaker Church. 

117. Crystal Mountains. A name once given to the White moun- 
tains on account of crystals found there that were supposed to be 
diamonds. 

Compare The Corn Song with Ellen Allerton's Walls of Corn. 



DEC 101904 



